


Maternal Instinct

by Biblio (Heyerchick)



Series: A Curse And A Blessing [4]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Humour, M/M, Relationship Study, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 07:02:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 41,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12835824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heyerchick/pseuds/Biblio
Summary: Title: 			Maternal InstinctAuthor: 		BiblioRating: 		RPairing: 		Jack and DanielCategory: 		Angst.  Friendship.  Humour.  Relationship Study.  Romance.Date: 			13 February 2008Series/Sequel	Curse And A Blessing; sequel to "Prodigal Son,"  "Passion Play" and "A 			Dinner Of Herbs."Season/Spoilers: 	Early Season 7, after "Fallen."Synopsis: 	With Kate on the case, Daniel back from the dead and Jack back in high school, plausible deniability will never be the same.





	Maternal Instinct

Daniel Jackson, formerly deceased, recently de-ascended [and currently somewhat bemused] recovering amnesiac, ran his fingers lovingly across the spines of the books -- his books.  The newly remembered textures of leather and gold tantalised, suffusing him with an almost guilty pleasure. 

"It almost doesn't feel right to get paid for this," he confided to his omnipresent escort of three, seated in a relaxed row on the opposite side of his lab bench, looking as if they had no place they'd rather be.  "Not when it's so much..."

"Fun?" Samantha Carter interjected with a twinkle.

"Fun," Daniel repeated, considering the concept.

"Not a lot of it to be had in the City of the Dead, eh?" Jack O'Neill enquired, with some certainty he knew the answer.

"Lost," Daniel corrected automatically.  "Vis Uban -- it actually translates as..."

"Never mind!" Jack interrupted swiftly.

"I _knew_ you'd say that!" Daniel said, beaming.  "You hate when I talk about anything but you."

Samantha - he had to remember to call her Sam - snorted, dropping her head to avoid Jack's scowl.

"It appears your memory is indeed returning, DanielJackson," Teal'c said approvingly.

"Selective memory," Jack sniffed, still bearing a grudge over the whole Jim thing.  "I have to show you how to flush, floss, shave and tie your shoelaces, but _this_..."  He gestured at the book-filled walls of the lab with an expression of mock loathing.  "This, you remember."

"I told you what it was like for me," Daniel said.  "When you first found me on Vis Uban.  How I felt my life was right there, floating in front of me.  How I would reach out for a memory, and it would be gone." 

Jack had told him he was dead.  Things had hardly got less confusing for him since. 

"I'm still reaching out.  All the time.  Only, now, when I grab for them, the memories are there.  I remember the books -- _my_ books," he corrected himself, consciously asserting ownership. "Because I spent so much time here in the lab with Jonas preparing for the Anubis mission.  I had to look at them all, every one of them, to trigger those memories.  I know which books I have, but not necessarily what's in them."

"We are your friends, DanielJackson," Teal'c said.  "We do not require you to justify the progress of your recovery."

"Speak for yourself," Jack muttered.

"I agree with the colonel on this one," Sam piped up.  "At least in the sense I'd like to know more about what you're going through, Daniel.  I'd like to understand.  And to help if I can."

After due consideration, Teal'c inclined his head in acknowledgement of the sentiment.  "As would I."

"You're going to annoy me either way," Jack admitted cheerfully, squirming in what was either a vain search for a more comfortable spot on his stool or a symptom of his bored-toddler attention span.

Having intelligently deduced that one, alone, on his own, equated to a near-permanent party of four, Daniel capitulated with the best grace he could muster under the supportive, attentive blowtorch of three pairs of friendly eyes fixed on him.

"It's not like a veil magically lifting," he said, doing a little uncomfortable squirming of his own under the anvil of their undivided attention.  "I have to...well, I have to work for it.  I have to see a thing, need a thing -- consciously think about it -- before I can know a thing.  I need that initial trigger."

It appeared they needed more.  Particularly Jack, who required life super-sized.

Daniel tried again.

"Half the time I don't know what I know until I know it."

"Yes?" Sam asked encouragingly.

"I...um...it's a bit like when you haven’t thought about something for a long time.  The memory is there, you just don't know it's there, not until something triggers it.  You've forgotten it.  Until you need it.  And then it's there.  You know?"

"No."  Jack, unable to resist.

"I'm supposed to be better at this.  Aren’t I?" Daniel appealed.

"Better at what?" Jack asked, on cue.

Daniel brightened at this recognition, that Jack would say just this, react in just this way, the latest small piece of his fascinating, frustrating puzzle.  "Talking." 

"O'Neill," Teal'c warned without even glancing at the suddenly galvanised colonel.

"Oh, come on, T!" Jack complained, with an eloquent gesture at Daniel.  "He's _asking_ for it."

"As are you," Teal'c said, unmoved by Jack's comedic needs.

"I'm just trying to help him feel normal," Jack explained in wounded tones.

"I remember you doing a lot of that," Daniel realised.

"A lot."  Sam, a fellow sufferer, agreed, ignoring another hard look from Jack.

"Your version of normal, anyway," Daniel noted.

"Can we focus here?" Jack said.  "The important thing is, do you remember _us_?"

"Yes."

Well...

He was loathe to upset them, but felt he had to be honest.

"It's...um...it's the same," Daniel admitted.  "Sorry.  I don't remember everything.  It's just...something will happen, or one of you will say something, or do something...and I'll remember something happened -- something like that -- happened before."

"Triggers," Jack said, his head down, suddenly rather interested in running his fingers along a suspected scratch on the surface of the table.

"Do you?" Sam started to ask, then stopped in sudden embarrassment.

"Does he what?" Jack said.  "Don't leave us in suspense, Carter.  Spit it out."

"Do you feel the same?" Sam winced openly, realising she was really putting Daniel on the spot as the words were coming out of her mouth.  "About us?  Our friendship, I mean?"

"Or is it like looking way back in your life?" Jack asked, surprising them with an attempt at insight.  "Like knowing you were tight with some freckle-faced tyke in kindergarten but not really feeling it when the sonovabitch pulls you over and gives you a speeding ticket twenty years later?"

"Are you speaking from personal experience there, Sir?" Sam enquired.

"I was barely over the speed limit, Carter.  Nothing astronomical."

"We are brothers, DanielJackson," Teal'c said, ignoring the byplay.  "Do you know it?"

"I'm learning to," Daniel offered, completely embarrassed.  "I know you're my friends."

"Because you remember it," Sam said, visibly disappointed.  "Not because you feel it."

"I'm learning to," Daniel said again, with a hesitant smile.

"Those triggers we were talking about," Jack said.

"I'm sorry."  What else could Daniel say?

"Don't be!" Sam said.  "It's not your fault, Daniel.  None of this is your fault.  All you did was try to...to _help_ people.  Don't ever apologise for that.  It's who you are."

Teal'c inclined his head in that stately, beneficent way he had, smiling warm agreement.

"They didn't deserve it," Jack said, his face stubborn.  "Not those people."

"Colonel O'Neill did not willingly accept your replacement, DanielJackson," Teal'c explained.

"Replacement?" Jack burst out.  "He gets Daniel killed, then he gets his stuff?  His _life_?"

"You told Jonas he earned it. When he was leaving.  You said he earned it," Daniel reminded Jack.

"Going back to that pit of vipers on Kelowna?" Jack snapped.  "You bet he earned it!"

"It wasn't his fault I died, Jack."

"It was his fault you were the only one who died," Jack argued, not giving ground.  "He just sat back, let you do all the hero stuff, then lied about it to save his own ass."

"He tried to put it right," Sam reminded Jack.

"In time, Jonas Quinn became our friend, O'Neill," Teal'c said.

"Not my friend."

"The colonel accepted Jonas on SG-1 not because he was a replacement for you, Daniel, but because he wasn't and never could be," Sam said, surprising a quick, approving look out of Jack.

There was a momentary silence, a sense they needed to say these things, but an awkwardness about it because no one had expected to be saying them right now. 

"My single strongest memory is of dying," Daniel said, but not in a maudlin way, smiling reassuringly in response to Jack's reflexive flinch. 

It was what it was.  Daniel had the memory of pain, of wanting to live and needing to die, but those were burdens he'd put away from himself.  He was freed from that suffering.

Impulsively, Sam reached out across the crowded surface of the lab bench to squeeze his hand comfortingly.  "It's one of my strongest memories too," she said softly.  "One of the hardest things I've ever had to live through."

Looking down at the table, busy with the scratch now, a restive Jack said nothing.

"Jacob...he couldn't have saved me," Daniel told her, wanting to reach out in his own way.  "You do know that, don't you?  That it was too late for me?"

"You were too far gone," Jack said in a rough, low tone, almost loathe to look up and meet Daniel's eyes.  "I knew that.  Even if you'd lived, if Jacob could even _do_ that, it...it wouldn’t have been _you_."

"I wanted to go.  I _had_ to go," Daniel apologised to them all.  "I'm sorry.  It wasn't anyone's fault, but it was my time, and when Oma came -- I wasn't ready to die.  Or to live like someone dead.  I...I had to let all of that go.  I had to let _you_ go.  I can't regret it," Daniel warned, looking right at Jack, trusting, and steadied by the depth of understanding in his dark, softening eyes.

"Neither can I," Jack admitted.

"Nor I."

After a moment of struggle, Sam nodded too, biting her lip.

"You're not angry?" Daniel asked them all, but meaning Jack.  There was a sense of familiarity about this, about putting Jack first.  A settling into an old, old routine.

"Daniel," Jack replied with gruff patience, "deep down, even you're angry.  Some day you'll remember that.  If you mean do I blame you for it, am I nursing a grudge?  Then no.  No, I'm not angry.  I didn't want you to die either."

Daniel found his throat to be uncomfortably tight, too tight for him to talk or to find a place to put his hands, or his burning face.  He felt a little cold and a little hot and completely shaken. 

He remembered this -- this unaccountably strong, glad feeling.  The reality of friendship.  He remembered Jack.  He found himself smiling and was certain of the new feeling, the old friendship, when Jack smiled back.

"Have you regained memories from your time ascended, DanielJackson?" Teal'c asked, taking full advantage of the rare Waltons moment.

"I thought he didn't have to justify the progress of his recovery to us?" Jack said.

"I am merely concerned for his well-being."  Placidly poker-faced, Teal'c didn't so much as twitch a guilty eyebrow. 

"He's good," Jack commented to Sam.  "That almost sounds plausible."

"Yes, Sir.  Almost as plausible as when he answered _every_ question Daniel threw at him right after we _all_ agreed he should be allowed to recover his memories in his own time and at his own pace."

"But you brought me back here to show me who I was," Daniel reminded Sam, giving in to mischief.  "It's not Teal'c's fault I turned out to be so persistent."

"He's _Jaffa_!" Jack objected. 

"He's supposed to be able to withstand _anything_ ," Sam agreed.

"Anything except nagging, apparently," Jack said.

If Teal'c was smiling, it was on the inside.

"Nagging?" Daniel queried.  "I thought...persuasive?"

"Nagging," Jack said.

Since making something of this would only prove Jack's point, Daniel had to forego the opportunity to score a few of his own.

"No," he said, swiftly returning to the original question.  "I don't remember anything from my time ascended.  I can remember things leading up to my death, I can remember everything from the time Shamda and the others found me in the forest, but the time between those events is a complete blank."

"I don't believe that was necessarily your choice, Daniel," Sam said.  "Orlin...You remember Orlin?"

"Carter's invisible friend," Jack supplied in a helpful spirit.  "Built a Stargate out of her microwave.  Remember?"

"Not really."

"Tall guy?  Tentacles?"

Sam made an impatient face.  "Orlin was punished severely by the other ascended beings for interfering in the affairs of the Velonans and you, well..." She hesitated, looking for the best way to get Daniel to swallow something unpalatable.

"You're even better at interfering than you are at nagging persistence," Jack explained with his usual tact.  "Interfering is what got you killed.  And not for the first time, I might add."

"There have been many such instances in the years we have known one another, DanielJackson," Teal'c agreed.

"When it comes to stuff like compassion and universal justice, you're a little..." Jack broke off, shrugged, and corrected himself.  "Okay, you're a _lot_ gung ho."

Gung ho? Daniel blinked at this.

"You're saying I got myself kicked out of the afterlife?"

"It's possible," Sam said.

"It is probable," Teal'c said.

"Definitely," Jack said.

"Um...thanks," Daniel said hesitantly.

"We're not suggesting that's a _bad_ thing," Sam hastened to assure him.

"It's just a you thing," Jack grinned.

"Indeed."

"I'd like to say I'll have to take your word for it, but I seem to remember a lot of this kind of thing too," Daniel confessed sheepishly.

"You didn't only get us into trouble," Jack promised, backtracking with some generosity.  "You got us out of it too."

The simplicity of their acceptance of this person he had been, their faith in this person he was becoming, demanded a response from Daniel, a gesture of his own. 

"When I died, when I ascended -- I didn't think it was a round trip, you know?  I didn't know a way back to what I was." Straying once more into the uncomfortably personal, he stood up, moved over to the nearest stack of books and began to straighten them.  "It was...final."

"Pissing off the other ascended is pretty final too," Jack said. "They fried an entire planet _and_ one of their own for stepping out of line.  You, a proven cosmic pain in the ass, they just dump buck naked in the forest.  Frostbite aside, I'd say you got off light."

Daniel found he was shaking his head.  "I might not have my memories back, I may never get those memories back, but I do know what I feel.  This..."  He gestured around him at the lab, at his friends, towards the world outside the concrete and cameras.  "This is not a mistake.  Coming back, that is not my punishment."

"Maybe coming back without your memory is," Sam suggested.  "You would never have given that up willingly.  Not you, Daniel.  Not when you've worked so hard, risked everything, risked your _life_ pushing at intellectual boundaries.  It's too important to you." 

"Obviously not as important as this, or I wouldn't be here," Daniel said simply.  "I can't explain it, I won't even try.  I only know this was a choice I made.  To come back.  To be here."

It was around the time all the goofy smiles were fading it started to sink in there had been, if not an actual baring of souls, a hint of Hallmark-worthy skin here and there.  Everyone had said either too much, or not enough, or hadn't really got to what they meant to say, and everyone was sober.  Now, no one knew quite what to say. 

There was a bit of stretching, scratching and interest taken in the many and varied contents of Daniel's fortuitously heaped lab bench. 

"I thought I'd find you all here."

Saved by the general!

Sam and Jack bounced gratefully to their feet while Teal'c came out of the trance he'd been faking.

A seasoned veteran, Major General George Hammond knew the emotional aftermath of impromptu teambuilding when he saw it and responded with aplomb.

"We have a problem."

SG-1 indicated they were _entirely_ at his disposal.

"It concerns Dr. Jackson."

"Doesn’t it always?" Daniel sighed, bearing up bravely under a consoling pat from the general.

"In this case it concerns your request to live off-base, son," the general replied, waving everyone back to their seats.  "The NID have lodged an official objection."

"Well, what a surprise," Jack said sourly.

"The NID?" Daniel glanced to Jack for his lead on this.  "They're the bad guys, right?"

"Right," Jack agreed, pretending not to see the general's reproving frown.

"They're overrun with rogues and traitors and my zip code is keeping them up nights?" Daniel complained.  "Shouldn't they be getting their own house in order first?"

"That's part of the reason they're concerned," General Hammond said.  "Let me be frank."

"This ought to be good," Jack grumbled on Daniel's behalf.

"The ascended beings we've encountered have possessed inordinate power and demonstrated intimate knowledge of some extremely advanced technology." 

"Specifically, big space guns," Jack said.

"I think I know where this is going," Sam said, her face pinching as if she smelled something bad.  "The NID think Daniel has that information.  And they want it."

Without appearing to move a muscle, Teal'c managed to make the concrete walls look soft.

"Amnesia too difficult a concept for them to grasp, huh?" Jack asked, his sarcasm unsubtle.

"They won't simply accept Daniel has amnesia," Sam said.  "They'll want _proof_ he doesn't have those memories."

"Short of exploratory brain surgery, I'm not sure how they'd get it," Daniel said wryly.  "And, forgive me, but the prospect of them taking my word for it in the way we've seen them take Teal'c's word from time to time does not appeal."

"The NID agent I just spoke with echoes your assessment of the situation," the general revealed.  "Only he identified the rogue operatives within the NID as the real threat to Dr. Jackson."

"Of course he did."  Jack rolled impatient eyes.

"I thought the problem was they couldn't identify the rogue operatives from the regular operatives?" Daniel queried.

"No, the problem is, you can't tell the difference either way," Jack said.

The general's lips twitched.  "Since the organisation's security is compromised, there's no question of them taking custody of Dr. Jackson.  The President agrees he should remain under the protection of the SGC."

"I can take care of myself."  Daniel felt he should have this established for the record.  He didn't want anyone reading anything into his being temporarily challenged by his toothpaste. 

"That's not in dispute, Dr. Jackson," the general said, kindly overlooking Daniel's retention of his no longer officially assigned guard as a navigational aid and book transporter.

"So, I don't actually have torture or sinister experimentation in my immediate future?" Daniel asked, perking up.

"Discounting Teal'c's addiction to Dr. Phil, and the mess hall menu?" Jack suggested.

"Representatives from the NID do intend to fully de-brief Dr. Jackson once certain logistical issues can be resolved," Hammond replied.

"I.E., you can't put them off any longer," Jack interpreted.

"I will accompany DanielJackson throughout these interrogations," Teal'c announced.

"Thank you, Teal'c." Daniel smiled at him.  "Knowing your memory is as long as your reach, that's a great comfort."

Not troubling to conceal his generally evil intentions, a gratified Teal'c bowed.

"So, basically, General, the NID want us to keep Daniel securely incommunicado at the SGC so they can get to him before the rogue NID do?" Sam summed up.  She liked to have things clear.  "That should simplify things tremendously, Sir," she said, grinning.  "The _only_ NID agent who _hasn't_ gone rogue on us is Agent Barrett.  And he is sort of on our side."

"That's not a goal I feel I can support, even if the bad guy is on our side," Daniel said.  "I'd like my life back, General.  Please.  I _need_ my life back.  I'm never going to fill the gaps in my memory if all I see is concrete.  I need to know I can walk out of here when I want to."

"I do have a few security concerns of my own, son," Hammond cautioned.

"If you mean you don't want Daniel accepting candy from strange rogue agents," Jack grinned.  "Can I suggest..."

"He can stay with me!" Sam offered brightly.  "I have the room, I'm more than qualified to ensure his safety, and Agent Barrett is a friend."

"I don't want to rain on your parade, Carter, but you were snatched by the strange rogue agents yourself a year or two back," Jack countered, annoyed for some reason and showing it.

"You were shot by them, Sir," Sam said, getting a little pissy herself.  "Then subsequently framed for murder.  Daniel is..."

"Intending to look for my own place," Daniel said with a slight smile.  "If that's okay?  I, er, I need to take back some control, some time.  You know?"

It seemed to him these newfound old friends of his did know even if they weren't prepared to come out and admit it.

"I'm not ready to live off-base, not yet."

"Fair enough," Jack conceded, his eyes softening in just that way Daniel would notice.

"I would like to get out there, though.  Take a look at the world, see if it's like I think I remember it.  Check out some houses, buy some clothes, have a cup of tea."

" _Tea_?"

He chuckled at their stunned expressions.

"Amnesia humour."

 

* * *

 

 

Jack O'Neill was not an easy man to daunt, but he skulked behind the gazebo for twenty minutes before he got up the nerve to sneak over to his mother's kitchen door, wishing every step of the way the family had stayed safely home in the Windy City.  They'd been so much easier to handle on the other end of the phone than they were on the other end of his street.  Now, if he hung up on his mother, she just came over.

Level with the pristine cream wall, freshly painted by a susceptible Jaffa, he ducked around to take a quick survey of the room, was visible through the Victorian glass pane for maybe five or six seconds, but of course his surprised mother had to be right _there_ , on the other side of it.

Smiling sickly, he went in.

Outraged, his mother dropped her muffin tin on the polished worktop to swipe him upside the head with a scorching chicken-embossed oven mitt.

"Mom," he said weakly.

Abandoning her armed response, Kate looked searchingly up at him, gave him a swift, hard kiss on the cheek, then took him firmly in hand.  Depositing him into the nearest kitchen chair, she had a stiff medicinal dram and a still steaming maple walnut muffin in front of him before he stopped fibrillating.

"Spill," she ordered briskly, dropping into the chair nearest his, her usual one, at the foot of their old, old table.  "Whatever it is, Jack, just get it out.  Then we'll fix it."

She was bullish about him; she had been since the last time he'd come into her kitchen like this, shattered, blindly reciting a tissue of carefully prepared lies and one agonising truth.  If she hadn't loved him, if she hadn't been so broken by Daniel's death, she would have seen right through him.

She saw him now, though, saw that while it wasn't terrible, it was _something_.  It was hard.

"There's no way I can get this out without you having a heart attack, Mom," Jack warned, sliding the whisky glass over to her.

"If you don't spit it out, you can be sure I'm taking you with me, son," she threatened as he gripped her hand.

There was no other way for him than straight out with it.

"Daniel's alive.  We made a mistake.  He's alive."

Her fingers clenched, nails driving into him while she forgot to breathe, her face grey and frail as paper, and her eyes...

She grabbed for the glass, tossing back the whisky in a harsh gulp. 

"You're sure?"  She knew he was.  "How?" she whispered, staring into the empty glass.  "I know there was no...no body...just what was left of his car.  But the DNA you found?  All those tests?"

"I don't know what to tell you, Mom," Jack said, excruciatingly aware of how lame this sounded and how little choice he had but to make the best of it if Daniel was to get his life back.  "Maybe there was a delay before the car exploded.  I...Look, there must have been a delay, for him to get out, get away.  And he was hurt, we know that."

"The DNA.  It had to come from somewhere.  An injury, a wound."

"Right."

"But...why didn't he come back to us?" Kate asked, her face blanching.  "How badly was... is...he hurt?"

"Physically, he's fine," Jack reassured her.  "But he has amnesia and it's a doozy.  He has no idea where he's been for the past year, who he's been with.  A couple of months back, he just woke up one day way out in the woods and some people found him, took him in.  A small community, back of beyond, no electricity, nothing."  He wove the truths and the lies deftly, close enough to what had really happened he talked with conviction.  "It was pure dumb luck that brought him home, some kind of state health programme that had the place on their roster for kids' inoculations."

"Amnesia?"  Kate's brow wrinkled as she turned this over.  It sounded like the kind of thing that would happen to Daniel.

"It's bad.  He's having to learn stupid stuff, simple stuff.  Coffee pots, electric shavers, TV remote.  Doesn't know how to drive or what he likes for breakfast."

"Does he know _you_?" she whipped at him.

"No," Jack said, fairly steady.  Getting used to it.  "He's forgotten who he is, Mom, what he is, what he knows."

"He knows us, Jack.  Bring our boy home."

"I can't."

"Bring him home."

Thinking that when the irresistible force hit the immovable object, what you got was his mother, Jack was obliged to dig deep and come up communicating.

"Mom, Daniel understands we were friends only because he remembers this happened or that happened and I was there, because it's what I tell him.  He doesn't _know_ it, he doesn't _feel_ it.  He's having to learn we're friends not because of what we might have been through in the past, but because of what we're going through now."  Jack brought her hand to his face, kissing the back of it in a rare display of affection he would not hesitate to deny if called on it.  "Understand?"

Kate always understood more than she was told, more than Jack could say; much, much more than he wanted her to.  Her hand gentled in his.

"You still love him."

"Doesn't do me a whole lot of good right now," Jack said with a tired smile.  "I've been changed by losing him, God knows you've been on my back about it enough times, but it's nothing compared to the changes in Daniel.  He's not who he was.  He's...lighter."

It was the best way Jack knew how to put it and it wasn't at all what his mother expected to hear.

"Lost his memory and found a sense of humour," he tried again.

Jack felt a bit better when he saw she found this harder to swallow than the regrettable DNA thing or the actual amnesia.  In the interests of national security and saving his own ass, he went with it.

"All the baggage he had, all that history?  It's coming back to him, piece by piece, but somehow it's lost the power to hurt him.  He's past all of that."

"You think he's past your relationship?"

"How am I supposed to know that, Mom?" Jack asked reasonably.  "He doesn't have a clue we were together.  He's got nothing."

"On any other day, I'd say I'd love to be there when he finds out."  Kate shook her head sorrowfully.  "But, honey, I can't think of any way it could turn out well.  You know how Daniel gets when he..."

"I used to know," Jack interrupted.  "Now, I'm not so sure."

"He's really so different?"

Unexpectedly smiling, Jack had to say that he was.

"You like him," Kate said, satisfied.  "You always did, you know."  She reached up to fuss with an apparently wayward lock of his hair, smoothing it back into what she thought was its place.  "And if the old Daniel loved you, how much more will the new Daniel?" 

She kissed his cheek then, her face coming to rest against his.

He felt her tremble, knew how hard he'd hit her with this.  It was no bad thing, but it was _Daniel_.  He knew how it was.

That first glimpse of Daniel's face had pulverised him.  Nothing had made sense to him then, nothing had made sense to him since.  He could hardly see Daniel as any closer to him now than when he was ascended.  He was as untouchable in the flesh.

And, damn, but Jack did like him.  Liked him, scarcely knew him, and loved the bones of him.

 

* * *

 

 

The Egg & I was light, bright and busy with the breakfast crowd.  Daniel's doubts about the décor -- heavy on the chickens -- were offset somewhat by the contents of the heaped breakfast platters.  Also heavy on the chickens.  He was drawn.  He was strongly drawn.

"Dr. Fraiser instructed me to ensure you consumed a healthy, balanced meal," Teal'c said, massive, impassive and wearing a funny hat.

The part of the booth not occupied by him was filled with laconic colonel.  The latest threat to Jack's killer cool came from the apparently irresistible condiments, particularly the sugar substitutes, which were stacking high rise.

Daniel leaned forward conspiratorially.  After close inspection of the menu, the Egg & I had been deemed clear of NID agents, rogue or otherwise, but when it came to small red-headed tartars, you could never be too sure.

"Dr. Fraiser tried to convince me I was fond of oatmeal and fresh fruit, you know," he confided, not hiding his sense of grievance.  "I have not forged an emotional connection to oatmeal."    And he'd been choking it down for a couple of weeks now.

He felt this perfidy freed him of all obligation to the medical profession.  He was pretty damned sure they were supposed to do no harm -- and oatmeal was vile. 

He was also pretty damned sure from the shifty look on Teal'c's face that their particular medical professional could do a lot of harm and the big guy was covering his yellow belly on this one.  Traitor.

"I'll be sure to order the juice," he compromised grudgingly, with an eye to the Fraiser-approved Morning Harvest portion of the menu.

There was a brief, audible squabble among the flock of waitresses gathered by the counter, seemingly over who was going to serve them.  The loser squealed, peeled away from the crowd and accelerated towards their booth.  Probably wanted to get it over with as fast as possible. 

Daniel didn't blame her.  They weren't only too big for their booth, the three of them together were almost too big for the restaurant.

"I told you to wear a different hat," he told Teal'c accusingly.  "You look like you robbed the gift store at the rodeo museum."

O'Neill Construction went on break.  "Just be glad he's not wearing the poncho."

"What can I get you gentlemen?" the waitress asked.  She was flushed, poor thing.

"I'd like a Traffic Jam, plus Biscuits & Gravy," Daniel said quickly, admiring the professionalism of her big smile and the way she made eye contact, and wanting to help things along.  "And I want to Go Bananas."

"Any sides?"

 "Pork green chilli with the Jam, French toast with the Bananas."

"To drink?"

"Gourmet coffee."

"Can I get you anything else?"

Daniel recalled his health obligations.  "Orange juice.  The carafe."

Staring into their eyes, possibly for signs of imminent attack, she scooped the Leaning Tower of Equal back into its bowl, which upset O'Neill Construction, twitched the menu from the fingers of the Jaffa Kid and stumbled away.

"Er, excuse me?" Daniel called after her.  "My friends haven’t ordered."

 

* * *

 

 

Their mission to the Chapel Hills Mall was derailed at the entrance, when Daniel spotted the ice rink and got curious.  He wanted to watch the people on the rink for a while and then he wanted to try it out for himself, partly because the point of going around and around like that wasn't immediately obvious to him.

"Skating?" Jack asked, visibly startled.

"Skating.  I have no specific memories of skating."

"Okay. Just remember that for every pancake or Belgian waffle, there's a couple bowls of oatmeal out there, Daniel," Jack cautioned.  "By which I mean it's harder than it looks."

"I just...I don't know why I never did it before."

"I don't know that's necessarily the best reason to be doing it now," Jack noted, smiling maliciously at the faint, pained expression on Teal'c's face, virgin skater and obsessively conscientious bodyguard.  The chances of him being physically able to confine himself to merely spectating from dry land while Daniel risked grievous bodily harm under Jack's tuition were somewhere between zero and none.

They all got skates.

Jack soared out onto the ice, whipping around the rink at speed.

Teal'c came gliding out, head high, arms clasped neatly behind his back, no apparent means of locomotion.

Daniel picked his way out on the tips of his toes, or rather the tips of his skates, complaining he had too many legs.

It was fairly obvious from the moment he'd stood up why he never did this before.

Jack could do it forward, backwards, in circles and on one leg.

Teal'c did it with a kind of Pied Piper effect, gathering the fascinated miniature Michelle Kwans in his stately wake as he zenned around the rink.

Daniel did it holding on to the railing, until he ran into a podgy peewee with a tighter grip.  Perfectly prepared to turn tail and go back the way he came, he was thwarted by his skates, which decided on their own to venture out onto the ice, taking him along for the ride.  His wobbling legs strenuously objected, trying to head in different directions than the rest of him.  Windmilling his arms seemed to help a little, but running into Jack helped a lot.  He was a lot more pliable than the railing, he was nice and warm, and willing to tow.

A circuit or two later, Daniel relinquished his death grip and tried breathing.  A circuit or two after that, he didn't scream when Jack let go.  He did come to a complete halt before it occurred to him he had to move his legs if he wanted to keep going.  Then he found that, hard as this was to believe, it had been easier to keep going than it was to get going.

One of Teal'c's peewees called out to him as the convoy chugged past.

"Hey, mister!  You're doing it wrong."

Jack swooped in.  A brisk swat to the ass got Daniel into gear, trying not to fall on his face got his feet moving.  He kept moving, watching his feet the whole time.  From time to time he saw other feet, other skates and knees on the periphery, scattering at his approach.  He kept motoring.  Another circuit or two and he was, if not skating, at least tottering arthritically on the ice.

Daniel thought he'd found another waffle, not oatmeal, wondered why he'd never tried this before now. 

Jack thought if he liked this, he should try it with a big stick, see what _that_ did for him.  Happened to have a spare.  Great for balance.

The peewees still thought he was doing it wrong.

 

* * *

 

 

Their primary objective was wardrobe replenishment.

Jack was inclined towards Macy's.  You could get in, get out and do a lot of retail damage.

Teal'c, nursing a sartorial grudge, suggested the gift shop at the rodeo museum.

Daniel voted for Borders and made a break for it.

He was captured by the three-for-two offer on waist management and mercilessly extracted.

A sweet elderly couple were inclined to intervene, heading them off at Help.

"He's not heavy," Jack thanked them.

"He is my brother," Teal'c added.

Mourning, Daniel would not be swayed by the charms of Macy's as he was escorted gently but firmly to Men's.

He found it very trying having to select his underwear in front of an audience, although not as trying as the audience, who found themselves carrying it until it occurred to them to get a cart, then carrying it again when they learned to their chagrin that Macy's did everything _but_ carts.

A victim of the SGC's laundry and its experimental xeno-detergents, Earth's last defence against alien biohazards, Daniel felt when it came to underwear, less was more.  He couldn't tell just by looking if he was boxers or briefs, but equating soft-knit with non-itch, settled for something sort of in between, generously recommended by Jack. 

They stormed through socks but Daniel was unconvinced by pyjamas.  He could hardly _imagine_ what the SGC laundry would do to acres of brushed cotton, deciding his underwear could multi-task until he got it to a place of safety.

Then came the Denim Event.  Macy's Biggest Ever.  Every fit, every finish.

Daniel was floored.  There was an inside to his legs just as there was an outside to them, but he didn't know what it measured.  Ditto for his waist.  And hips.  You just didn't have these problems with robes.

Purely in the interests of getting out of Macy's some time in his lifetime, Jack took charge, impressively able to tell Daniel's size just by looking at him.   He culled assorted denims from the Event, broadly similar in style, varying in shade of blue. 

Inspecting a pair at random from the selection, Daniel thought he'd better have a big lunch.  Skinny fit looked to him to be a judgement of some kind. 

When Jack was just as pointed with the half a dozen or so skinny t-shirts he picked out, Daniel took the hint, mentally pencilling in dessert, too.

He asserted himself in shirts, rebelling against a shade he'd seen Sam wear in to work, pulling out a couple of adjacent white shirts, a couple of blue shirts from the next rack, a couple of white and blue shirts from the rack beyond that.

Done.  He indicated he was in dire need of something to read and faint with hunger.

Exchanging a peculiarly loaded look with Teal'c, Jack got a little faint too.

 

* * *

 

 

The house was painted cream, single storey, sprawling through a colourful, well-tended garden.  It was probably as nice as a suburban house could be, with the flowers and all, but from where Daniel was starving, it lacked the appeal of the forty or so sit-down, fast-food or even gas station outlets they'd had to pass to get here.

"This is not your place, is it?" Daniel asked, some rusty survival instincts starting to kick in.  "Because, I've got to tell you, Jack...In the same way I knew I didn't owe you fifty before I knew what a buck was, I _know_ you can't cook."

"I wasn't planning to."  Jack's attempt to look wounded was not particularly convincing.  "My beer and salsa marinade is famous, you know."

"Infamous, you mean."

Daniel was going to have to have words with Teal'c about this.  Bad enough he'd bailed on them in favour of putt-testing the new glow-in-the-dark mini-golf place in the mall, but to abandon a poor unsuspecting amnesiac with nothing to read to bad beer barbecue was a calculated act of cruelty.

"Why are we here?" he asked suspiciously.

"Triggers."  Jack tapped the side of Daniel's head meaningfully.

Triggers?  Daniel looked out at the house with a touch more interest than before, dutifully trying to place it.  He was eventually able to work out some of the flowers were roses, but the house didn’t have the resonance an Ancient tablet, or Borders, or even pork green chilli, had for him.  It wasn't even something he thought he should know, but had missed out on, like the ice rink and the experience of skating.

"This house has some special significance?"  Daniel wasn't getting it and he was slightly annoyed Jack wasn't giving it away.  "And this better not be the part where you tell me 'You tell me'."

"My parents live here," Jack said with a charming smile.  "They wanted to see you."

"Okay."  Shrugging, Daniel got out of the truck, which was about the last response Jack had been expecting. 

"Whoah!" he called after Daniel, popping out of his side of the truck like a cork.  "We just skipped this whole..."  He strove for words.  " _Thing_!"

"What thing?"

"The Thing where you act like me having parents is the weirdest Thing you've ever heard in your _life_ because you figured I'd been raised by wolves or something.  Where you keep staring at me like I've grown an extra head and you get all inarticulate and say 'wow' a lot.  _That_ Thing!"

Jack stared at Daniel expectantly, almost unconsciously miming an introductory drum roll for the missing Thing. 

"Jack," Daniel said.  "Honestly...The only thing that occurs to me is the same thing I figured out when we were on the ice."

Jack's entire body begged the question.

"I didn't get out and do much, did I?" 

Not if something so ordinary and everyday could throw him.

Jack started to say something, then -- a genuine rarity -- he started to laugh; a snorting sound of astonishment delighting Daniel.  He reached out to give Daniel's shoulder a shake, his exasperation melting into warmth and dancing eyes.

"You're really not going to ask questions?" Jack shook his head in disbelief.

Daniel wanted the experience.  If he'd learned anything from his first visit to this world outside of Cheyenne Mountain, apparently his real world, it was this.  In a few hours, in one place, he'd learned of too many experiences he recognised, categorised, but hadn't shared. 

He wanted to be out here _doing_.

More importantly, he didn't want to question this uncomplicated gesture of acceptance, Jack's acceptance of him.  He hadn't been certain of it until now.  Jack had been kind to Daniel for sure, parking a healthy ego in favour of helping him remember, answering his questions oftentimes with more questions, forgiving his intrusions, his trespasses, taking him back on the team. 

A measure of trust had been extended, playfulness, humour and even trademark irritation exercised at his expense, not so very different than the relationship Jack had with Teal'c and Sam. 

Only Daniel had sensed there was so much more to the man than the charm and friendliness, so much held back, tantalising, beyond his reach.  A quality that drew him.

He could not have said why it was so important he see behind the affable mask, see the man.  He thought it might be the softness he would see now and then in the dark eyes, or the way he would instinctively measure what he learned, what he believed he understood, against Jack's perception, trusting Jack's lead.

He could only say Jack was important to him. 

It mattered to him, to have been allowed in.

"Did your parents know me before?" he asked, touched at his inclusion, anxious to please, not caring to question the impulse.  "Is it...Are they going to be okay seeing me?  You know, back from the dead?  I don't want to upset them."

"They've probably been watching from behind the drapes in shifts since they swallowed breakfast," Jack grinned.  "The only thing that would upset them would be you trying to weasel out of it and make a quick getaway.  In fact, we'd better speed things up or they're likely to come out and get you before you can have an attack of recognition and bolt for the truck."

The friendly hand on Daniel's shoulder guided him up the path, immaculate with smooth tri-coloured paving, not obviously hazardous.

The broad, Victorian style front door was flung open.

"You can get behind me if you like," Jack offered generously as a small silver-haired missile streaked towards Daniel.

Rocked back on his heels by the ferocity of the emotional assault, Daniel bravely ignored his creaking ribs, solicitously patting the woman's quivering back and making soothing sounds as his borrowed shirtfront was soaked.

Eventually the silver head tilted back and he found himself looking down into a lined, still beautiful face, scared and greedy and happy, into brown eyes.  Jack's eyes.

Daniel thought then of another garden, another broad front door.  A gleaming hallway and photographs, glimpses of Jack in them.  A kitchen table, a family table, Jack at that table, Jack with his guard down...Jack and his mother, teasing and being teased, loving and loved.

"Kate?"

Lighting up like Fourth of July, Kate squealed, launching up to kiss him hard.

"You remember me!" she crowed.

"I remember Jack," Daniel said unguardedly.  Jack as he wanted to know him.  Jack close to him.  Open to him.  No masks or amiable distance.  He felt, not a memory, not specifics, but an odd lightness, a bubbling, giddying, fragile feeling he wasn't given time to examine.

A triumphant, tearful Kate towed him by the hand towards the house and the family waiting there, while Daniel, looking back over his shoulder as he stumbled along in her wake...Daniel only had eyes for Jack.

Jack, well aware, only smiled.

Daniel wanted more of this lightness of being, but Kate was too quick for him. 

He was inside, in front of a wall of faces, fleeting moments framed from lives Kate expected him to know as he'd known her. 

It was obvious why. 

His own face jumped out at him here and there from the crowd on the wall, proof he knew the family from before.  He could read the evidence well enough to understand he'd somehow been part of the fabric of their lives, shared in the various family occasions commemorated in the photos. 

"What is it, love?" Kate asked, her hand hugging his.

"I'm glad," Daniel said, nodding briefly at a photograph that had all the faces he knew in this world, all reacting to something funny happening off camera, Daniel's face included.  Just one face among the many.  "Glad I'm not just watching."

"We broke you of that habit early," Kate promised.

Daniel wasn't inclined to linger among the photographs, where far too many crowding impressions were jostling and barging for attention.  He felt he knew many of the things around him, but not the place.  Not the house.  The walls were a pale, warm green, the space barely lifted from boxy ordinariness by the softening light from the hallway windows.  The hardwood floors shone, but other things, more of these familiar things, were missing.  Daniel thought there should be rugs, heritage shades, deeps reds and blues.  A homeliness, a character, a feel to the place he was missing.

Here, the floors were clear, the hallway wide and straight.  His eye tracked a clean, open line, a trail of sorts, and he followed. 

To his right, a half wall enclosed a bright, serious cook's kitchen, another boxy space, a simple square of cabinets and appliances topped by a gleaming counter.  One corner of the square, the near one, was open to give access to the kitchen from the hallway.  In the far corner, a door stood wide, letting in the sun with the sweet and pungent scents of herbs from the yard.

Daniel knew the table standing in the open dining space next to the kitchen.  Worn and a little scarred from long daily use, not just the many shared meals, but homework, art projects, newspaper crosswords, arguments and jokes and conversations.  The hub of this family's life.

One place at the table had no chair but was laid ready for a meal. 

The layout, the clean, level lines of the house, they made sense to him now, bounced him into the living room with a huge, glad smile and tunnel vision.

"Ruth!"

Vaguely aware Kate was crying again, and blaming Jack for it, Daniel kissed Ruth gently on her wrinkled cheek, dropping to his knees in front of her wheelchair where she could get a good look at him. 

When her thin lips trembled, he took her knotted hands carefully in his and found them cold. 

He remembered her coal black eyes snapping, twinkling, always alive and alert, a sure sign of the blithe spirit that was the strongest part of her.  Now Ruth was somehow dimmed, hesitant and quiet, blinking in confusion, as if she couldn't quite bring him into focus or even bring him to mind.

Daniel was acutely aware people he'd cared for, who'd cared for him, had been hurt by his death, but this was something else. 

The family didn't have the sophisticated support systems of the SGC at their back, the re-building of the vital team bond wasn't mission critical.  And the emotional quality of their response wasn't tempered by ingrained professionalism, or the forgiving truths of many years of difficult shared experiences.

This was only personal.  Only an old lady who'd been hurt.

"Ruth, it's Daniel.  Do you know me?"

There should have been a snappy come-back, a merciless ribbing from this expert player, but Ruth only put up a querulous hand to touch his cheek, slowly, as if the effort took everything out of her. 

His death had taken something from her, he realised, something his return couldn't erase.

"Thought I'd lost you, boy," Ruth said at last, her voice rusty and querulous.  "Don't you leave me again."  She patted his cheek again.  "Don't you leave my Jack again."

There was nothing Daniel could think of to say to her that wouldn't sound glib or facile.  He floundered in silence while Ruth patted and patted his cheek, content.

No one came to his rescue.  He wouldn't have thanked them if they had, because Ruth needed this and he was thinking more of her than of himself just now.

He was still on his beginning-to-ache knees, on eggshells by Ruth's wheelchair, desperately hoping the reality of his presence would sink in when finally a strong hand squeezed his shoulder and he looked up to find Joe smiling down at him.

"Well," Joe said, gruff and blinking.  "Good to have you home, son."

Daniel blurted out the only thing that came to him.

"I didn't mean to hurt anyone."

He had hurt them just the same.

"It's not your fault," Joe said kindly.  "You didn't go looking to have an accident and you sure didn't ask to turn your memory into swiss cheese."

Daniel started to agree with this and then stopped, because it was so obvious and so foolish.

"We're just glad to have you back with us," Joe said.

"Back where you belong," Kate chimed in with a vibrant certainty Daniel found _very_ familiar.

"We need some time to adjust, Daniel, just like we can see you need time," Joe went on.  "We know you don't remember us as well as we hope, but don't you worry about that."

"He wouldn't have worried about it if you hadn't brought it up," Jack suggested, amused.  "Now it's top of his To Fret list."

"I don't worry so much," Daniel demurred.  "There's nothing like dying to give you some perspective on living."

"That's supposed to be my line," Ruth scolded, rallying some from her stupor.

"I wondered how long you were going to milk the tender moment, you old fraud," Jack said fondly, ambling over to drop a light, affectionate kiss on the top of Ruth's head.

"Until it mooed," Ruth retorted, equally fond, gratefully accepting the graceful out Jack was offering her.  It was more than merely preserving her dignity; her pretence at being only as old as the ass she felt was her best defence too.

Without prompting, or specifics he could actually bring to mind, Daniel remembered he liked to kiss Ruth and make a fuss, and she liked to be kissed.  No sooner occurring than acted on, if not altogether successfully.  He put another dent in Ruth's brave front but chose not to see her crumpling face or the mizzling tears.  He kissed her cheek again and generally mooed for all he was worth.

"Such a good boy," Kate sniffled, snuggling into Joe.

If Daniel's patient acceptance of being patted like a good boy coaxed Ruth back to something like herself, it wasn't exactly a band aid.  He sat with her while Kate put the finishing touches on a lavish lunch, but still wasn't sure Ruth entirely believed he was real, even when she was showing off how Sam had hooked her up with a souped-up motorised chair while he'd been gone.

He walked along beside her as she motored to the dining table, manoeuvring expertly into the place set for her with feather-light touches to the sensitive controls.

"That's so great!" he enthused, taking the place beside her.  It was good to see her frailty offset by a real measure of physical independence, and equally good to know Sam was a part of things here too.  He was conscious of another small tie to the people around him and found he was glad for it.

While Jack was press-ganged into helping his mother in the kitchen, Joe took his customary place at the head of the table, tactfully adjacent to the open hallway.   He moved as easily with his cane on this spacious, level floor as Ruth moved around with her new wheelchair.

"What are you smiling at, son?" Joe asked, sliding a basket of warm bread rolls towards him.

"I'm just thinking how different this all is," Daniel said, looking around him.  "The people who took me in -- their lives were simpler than this.  They didn't have all these possessions or even what we'd consider the necessities, like plumbing or electricity."

Ruth's eyes widened.  "Were you taken in by some sort of cult, honey?"

"Survivalists?" Joe hazarded.

Smiling, Daniel shook his head.  "Just a rural community," he said.  "People who relied on each other, not technology, to get by.  They took me in, they were kind to me.  Kind enough to share precious resources with someone who didn't have any obvious or immediately useful skills," he added, nodding to the bowls of vegetables Jack was putting in the centre of the table and the platter of sizzling steaks brought by Kate.

"Of course they'd take care of you!" she said, sliding bowls of buttered corn cobs and rich gravy over to him.

"There's no of course about it," Daniel said in surprise, gratefully spearing a large steak.  "If you've never lived hand to mouth, I guess you can't understand it...but one of the biggest shocks for me when I was first back on base was getting in line for lunch in the mess hall.  I'd never seen that much food in my life."

"He's only four months old," Jack explained when the others stared at Daniel in surprise.

"We had to work to raise our food," Daniel said, energetically applying himself to the mashed potatoes.  "And it was damned hard work at that.  I was fit enough and pretty good with tools, so working the fields wasn't a real hardship, but my niche turned out to be tracking down wild fruit, nuts and edible seeds in the forest.  I spent a lot of time out there."

"Trying to work out who you were?"  Kate asked compassionately.

"That," Daniel agreed, taking an interest in the carrots.  "But mostly trying to get away from my host's incessant storytelling.  He hadn't had so much fun in years."  Shelled peas were added to his plate.  "Most of my value to the community was running interference while the rest of them scattered to safety."

"Was that a joke?" Kate asked Jack, out the corner of her mouth.

"I did warn you," Jack said.  "He does that now."

"How's the steak?" Joe asked, grinning as Daniel eyed seconds.

"I can't stop eating," Daniel apologised.  "It's not just the amount of food we have here, it's the variety.  It's hard not to eat when you can look at something like this, like corn, and know the work it took to get it to your plate.  To waste it would be obscene."

"You sound like you've been on another planet," Joe joked.

"I feel like it," Daniel said cheerfully.  "Food is a necessity, but even something as simple and focused as eating has become this, this _charged_ biological and social transaction, fraught with emotional and intellectual significance."

"Notice his vocabulary survived intact even if nothing else did," Jack sighed.

"I've been back for three weeks and every one of those days has brought something new to the menu.  Sometimes three times in a day.  Every day," Daniel said with frank wonder. 

"The chef should be shot," Jack observed with a shudder.

"I don't know what I like, not right away, not just from looking.  I have to look and touch, I have to taste.  Experience it.  And even then, if I remember a food from before, the memory that comes could be from when I was a kid.  It's completely random.  Random and _loaded_."  Daniel took advantage of their silent fascination to spear another corn cob.  "First time I ate waffles, I remembered my grandfather taking me to a diner.  I remembered liking waffles.  A lot.  Then I remembered what it was my grandfather had to say to me while I was eating those waffles I liked a lot.  That he was sorry, but he couldn't adopt me.  There was no place for me in his life.  I remembered I was eating those waffles after my parents' funeral, and then I remembered they were dead.  I remembered seeing them die."

There was, no pun, dead silence at the table.

"I'm not in control of this, that's all I'm trying to say.  I don't get to take anything for granted or have the luxury of 'face value.' I don't know what's coming at me next or where a sudden remembrance could take me or what I'm going to feel."

Daniel smiled at the family, gently.

"I'm still happy to have found you all again."

 

* * *

 

 

While Kate was making Jack take care of the lunch dishes, Joe and Ruth took full advantage, luring Daniel out to bore him through the full tour of the bird, butterfly and old-lady-friendly garden. 

Jack stood for a while at the kitchen door, watching.

"This has hit Ruth hard," he commented to his mother, contentedly frosting triple chocolate muffins with her famous double chocolate fudge.  "She keeps looking at Daniel like he's something she found on top of her Christmas tree."

"His death took her out at the knees, son," Kate said composedly.  "He was so kind to her and he spoiled her with so much attention..."

"Took her seriously, you mean."

Kate smiled.  "You're right, of course.  We can't know what it means to be old, to struggle with our bodies, to be dependent without some kind of end in sight, like the end of an illness.  When the body betrays, the mind becomes everything."  She came around from behind the kitchen counter to cuddle into Jack and watch her family playing in the garden.  "Maybe we are guilty of treating Ruth too gently, indulging her too much.  There's a difference between that and genuine interest in what she has to say and think, and you can bet she knows the difference."

"She knows you love her."

"That's not the same thing, love."  She smoothed some microscopic crease from his shirt.  "We can't all have Daniel's gift for listening."

"That's not a gift," Jack argued.  "It's a curse.  He really _is_ that interested.  In every damned thing!"

"We missed him too, love."

"I'm sensing you're going to be talking at me about that, and much, much more," Jack said dryly, allowing himself to be not so much lured as hauled along to the privacy of Kate's crammed, orderly studio for a heart-to-heart while the object of their affections was safely distracted.

"I'm not going to ask for your opinion, Mom, not when I know I'm going to get it with both barrels anyway," he stated, leaning casually against the closed door of the studio, the only available surface.

"Tell him," Kate said straightforwardly.  "The longer you wait, the less certain the outcome."

"Certain is the one thing Daniel tells us doesn't apply."

Kate smiled reflexively at the mention of his name.  "He's a darling."

"He's something, alright," Jack said a little ironically.

"Don't take it to heart, love," Kate advised.  "He adores you.  If you weren't second-guessing everything, you'd see what we see: he watches you all the time, he talks about you the whole time, he turns to you before anyone."

"All very good arguments for not taking advantage of his biggest blind spot," Jack said.

"But that's telling in and of itself, Jack," Kate assured him.  "You really _are_ his blind spot."

"If that's meant to be a good thing, I don't get how," Jack said, patiently resigned to having it explained to him.

"Daniel remembers some little thing about everyone, honey, and every thing, something personal.  He told us so.  Even waffles aren't safe for him." 

A disgustingly doting look got away from her for a minute.

"But when it comes to you?  Nada.  In every possible way, he shows you matter more to him than anyone, but he didn't even get your name right!  You can't tell me that doesn't mean something."

"I wouldn't dare."  Jack knew his place.

Kate tapped an impatient foot at the interruption, unrepentantly bossy-knows-best.  Jack was there to have his feelings talked about, not to talk about his feelings.

"Daniel is with you every day, you're clearly on his mind the whole time, and still...nothing.  Not a single personal memory.  Nothing from your time together.  You don't think that's the least bit suspicious?"

Jack thought it was damned depressing, but didn't respond to this provocative rhetorical cue.  His mother would tell him what he thought, and how he would feel about it, in her own good time.

"It seems like such an obvious defence mechanism," Kate said.  "Especially when you consider he remembered his _wife_ from looking at a photograph."

Jack couldn't see why she had to sound so triumphant.  "There's nothing obvious about it."

Kate looked at him pityingly, a trifle impatient with his masculine stupidity.

"When Daniel can look squarely at his past and face up to reliving traumas like the deaths of his parents and his wife, but is calling his alive-and-well, still-friendly lover _Jim_ ," she spelled out slowly and carefully.  "Something is very definitely rotten in his state of independence."

"Huh?"

"It's too hard for him, son," Kate advised briskly, wisely abandoning her efforts at maternal sensitivity.  When Jack refused to play along, as he so often did, she wound up wanting to smack her undutiful son in the head.  "Too painful to remember what you had together, what you've both lost, and might not be able to get back again, hurting you and being hurt himself, and still having to face you every day."

"You're shitting a lot of bull from one waffle story, Mom," Jack said, wondering how in hell she managed to cover so much heavy emotional ground in such short sentences. 

He found he'd lost his studied casualness; his shoulder-blades were trying to carve their way back out through the door.  Why he allowed his mother do this to him, he had no idea.  Or maybe 'allowed' wasn't quite the right way to put it, not when she never let him get away with it when he did stand up to her.

"I just think the longer you leave this without confronting it, the harder it's going to be for Daniel to deal with it," Kate explained in the most charmingly reasonable tone in the world.  "It's not just the damage recovering those memories might do to him, Jack, it's how _you_ feel about it all.  About him.  If you've known you were lovers the whole time, and done nothing, said nothing, what's he supposed to think when it all comes crashing out?  That the damage is irreparable and you can't forgive him?"

Kate came over to administer a physical as well as mental shake, then turned melting eyes on him.   And my, what big eyes she had, all the better to manipulate. 

"He didn't leave you behind on purpose.  You know that, don't you, love?  You're not angry with him.  Not because he had an accident." 

She punctuated this with a coaxing kiss that made Jack growl, but hug her back.  He was toast, buttered on both sides. 

An accident?

If it wasn't the whole truth, it was some of it.  A lot of it. 

Daniel certainly hadn't asked for a naquadria bomb to blow up in his face or for a coward who hid out while he tried to help.  What else could Daniel do _but_ help?  It wasn't only who he was, it was who Jack had worked and helped him to be, wanted him to be. 

With Daniel in so much pain, suffering so much from the radiation, help arriving far too late to be any good to him, what choice was left for him but to let go? 

What choice had Jack had but to let him go? 

They were beyond that.

"He loves you, son," Kate promised, absolute in her certainty. 

It was what Jack wanted to believe.

"Trust that...and bring him home." 

 

* * *

 

 

When they weren't absolutely required elsewhere, SG-1 went right on hanging out together in Daniel's lab.  Cutting the umbilical was probably long overdue, but they didn't much care.

Carter brought along her laptop, Teal'c assisted Daniel in nebulous but nonetheless essential ways, and Jack worked on his crossword, which wasn't as easy as the uninitiated or over-educated might think.  Any fool could get a crossword clue right, but it required real effort to piece together his infamous malapropisms and cool mental misfires and get it so beautifully wrong. 

Jack worked, he worked and he watched.  And he wondered.

He sort of hoped someplace between too soon and too late there'd be a standout moment, a well signposted moment, where Daniel would be ready and where he would find the right thing to do, or even, if all else failed, the right words to say.

He hoped for that.

In the few days since their lunch with the folks, he wasn't aware of missing any kind of possible moment where it would have been permissible to jump Daniel's bones [he kept thinking of it as putting his finger on the trigger], or at least flag it up as a potential threat. 

He wasn't sure there could _be_ a moment, not when Daniel saw a Double Whopper With Cheese as an adventure.

And Daniel was busy, busy. 

Dr. Jackson was on a regular tear through the embarrassing back catalogue of a department on a year-long tricky-translation slump, innocently surprised, bless him, there was such a gap between his amnesiac worst and everyone else's best. 

He was methodically working his way through each item on the bakery menu at Panera Bread and building a truly spiritual connection to Starbucks. 

When he wasn't porking out, he was working out with Jack, Teal'c and Carter, catching up on all the books, movies and life he'd missed. 

He was [it was widely rumoured] working on a killer briefing [top secret] he intended would lay to rest the killjoy military myth that pizza deliveries to Stargate Command were a threat to national security. 

He was absolutely straight-faced implausibly denying his need-to-know pizza project, which made everyone rooting for takeout think Oma had at least fixed up his funny bone before she bounced him back.

General Hammond was only saved from this, and other assorted Jackson mischief, when Carter's overly-friendly friend at the NID called to see if she was free for dinner at the Sonterra Grill and, incidentally, if Daniel could RSVP for an impromptu interrogation party, Saturday.  

Sadly, SG-1's swift, orderly deployment to P4B-677 in scholarly pursuit of a mysterious energy signature and mystic Ancient ruins neatly coincided with Happy Hour.

The team emerged from the event horizon to find four moons, two suns and an intense, cloudless sky pressing down on a vast plain drenched in flowers and rippling golden grasses on a scale the UAV had completely failed to do justice to.

Jack stood stock-still in front of the Stargate, letting out a low whistle of appreciation for the complete absence of conifers, misty mountains and penetrating precipitation.  The near universal Ancient terraforming template was much like Canada in that regard. 

Here, there was only grass.  The only thing they could see and the only thing they could hear.  Grass.  All around them.  Just...grass.

A truly Great plain.

"Bored now," Jack said.

"I'm reading a faint energy signature," Carter announced, expertly whisking her doodad around in front of her in a well-meant effort to keep him conscious.  "It's coming from over there."  She pointed out into the mass of swaying grass.

Jack obediently looked and saw...more grass.

Then he saw Teal'c with the F.R.E.D. and a darkly smug expression.

"What now?" he sighed.

"It appears General Hammond anticipated your need for diversion, O'Neill."

And not in a good way, Jack deduced, noting the particularly sphinx-like smugness of the Jaffa, the ants-in-the-pants avoidance dance of the astrophysicist and the archaeologist not very surreptitiously Kodaking the moment.

It appeared the General had anticipated Jack's objections to being anticipated, subverting his subordinates in a duplicitous display of superior strategy.  The F.R.E.D.'s storage bins were stacked high -- _both_ sides -- with neat manila reminders of Jack's own embarrassing year-long slump.

"You told Hammond about the absence of everything!" Jack complained to Carter, who hung her head in shame.  She was suckered by that chain of command thing every time.

And the cost of this defection, cunningly disguised as a thoughtfully boxed, annotated update to that thrilling read, the indispensable SGC operations manual?

One Kickin' Chicken, one Poultry Geist, one extremely cheesy Holy Cow and a Yard Sale with sides of salsa and slaw.

Not softened by the sides, Jack was thinking of evil-yet-legitimate ways and means at his disposal for wreaking revenge, well-oiling his treacherous, cheap team machine, when he was completely sucker-punched coming in for his close-up and Dr. DeMille winked at him.

Forgetting he'd just been sold out for pizza, Jack winked back and there they were, goofy and smiling, way up close, having this _moment_ , this...this mini-moment. 

What floored him was seeing Daniel completely in the moment.  Reacting to Jack, not some ghost or flashback, but _Jack_ , living large in the here and the now. 

He thought [hoped] Daniel would remember him from before.

It was meant to be from before.

Picking up and moving on.

He was braced for that.

 _That_ , not this.

He never thought Daniel would take it into his head to just go and fall for him, right out of the blue, right out in the open, right _now_.  Not with Carter and Teal'c watching indulgently, clueless from the sidelines, and the whole thing filmed for posterity.

It was just so damned _Daniel_.

Carter broke the spell, checking it was okay to move off now?  She took point, leading the way with her doodad, Teal'c behind her driving the F.R.E.D. , looking big and indigestible for any possible predators lurking in the chest-high grasses, Daniel meant to be practicing his driving with the trundling, resilient MALP, and generally showing his usual excited interest in exploration, but turning around the whole time to show his interest in Jack, bringing up the rear.

Jack found himself smiling.  Smiling and still fairly goofy for a man with big gun and bigger responsibilities.  Grinning and goofy, locked and loaded.  Stupidly happy.  Story of his exponentially complicated life, huh?

Out of nowhere, he was whistling again.

"Daniel?" Carter called back.  "If this is an Ancient structure, like we suspect, why is there no road leading to it?"

"No idea."

"Aren't the Ancients meant to be the road builders?"

"Yes.  And...I've still got no idea."

"But..."

"I came back an amnesiac, Sam, not omniscient."

"Good one!" Jack grinned.

"Perhaps we are merely unable to see this road you speak of," Teal'c suggested.

"Look back," Jack advised.  "We're carving out a three-lane highway as we go." 

The erratically Daniel-constructed MALP lane possibly was for freer spirits than the F.R.E.D., which was staff-weapon-straight.

"I think you just ruined a perfectly good invisible road joke, Jack," Daniel observed, using the opportunity to glance back, check Jack was still there, still in possession of all his limbs and his big goofy smile, functioning wink, that kind of thing.

"I haven't fallen for that one in years," Carter sneered.  Then she pulled up short, tracking her doodad around in a wide circle.  Then she smacked it upside its display.  She tried another slow circle.  "You'd swear someone was watching," she bitched.  "Waiting."

"No!" Daniel snorted.  "Don't tell me.  Invisible building?"

Carter turned right around, rolling her eyes and grinning.

"Well, my readings tell me it's here, just a few meters in front of us, but I don't see any ruins, mystic or Ancient or otherwise.  Do you?"

Parking F.R.E.D., Teal'c went forward with Carter to investigate.  For sound tactical reasons, Jack went forward to cover Daniel's vulnerable rear.  Daniel gave Jack half his banana power bar, which in his current calorie-obsessed state was dirty, dirty carb porn.

"Holy Hannah!" Carter yelped.

They ran forward, surprised when Carter and Teal'c overreacted, grabbing for them before they could even take up positions.

"Look down," Teal'c instructed.

They did.

"Holy crap!" Jack yelped, involuntarily backing up a step.

"Wow!" Daniel breathed.

The ground fell away; a clean, sharp cliff edge, as if it had been cut.  Glistening red-gold stone sheeted down, layer upon layer upon layer, down and down in time-worn terraces and crevasses, until it vanished into mist and clear, rushing water. 

Across the gorge stood a smooth, towering column of the same rock, glinting jewel-like in the suns.  Standing lower than the grassland either side of the gorge, the column couldn't be seen on the approach. 

To their right, upriver, a broad, thundering waterfall arced a prism of quivering rainbows, powering the rapids behind the column of rock as well as the calmer currents before it.

"Why couldn't we hear it?" Daniel asked Carter the obvious question.

"I don't know," she said, walking back a few meters, listening, then walking forward again, shaking her head in perplexed admiration.  "There's nothing!  It's amazing.  You can't hear anything except the breeze stirring the grass, not until you're on top of it."

"Or on your way to the bottom of it," Jack said.

"I don't know what to tell you, Sir," Carter admitted, flushing slow excitement.  "This is not what was shown on the UAV telemetry."

"About that?"

"You're still reading the energy signature?" Daniel interrupted.

"Yes."  Carter consulted her doodad, to be sure.  "It's steady, close by, if a little hard to pinpoint, which suggests it's somehow powering the illusory readings taken by the UAV."  She stared thoughtfully down into the gorge, assessing.  "Why the discrepancy?"

"Maybe you have to be here," Jack shrugged.  "Maybe a machine doesn't cut it."  The UAV could transmit data, but couldn't actually see or hear, or taste or smell.

"I see the ruins!" Daniel danced delight behind his field glasses.  "There!  The peaks and the outcroppings topping the column, those are towers, walls and roofs.  If you look -- the light is murder, but if you look, you'll see openings, windows, doorways."

Dutifully, they looked.

"I see rock," Jack said solemnly, ready for the quick, vengeful scuff of a pissy archaeological boot.

"What's in there?" Carter wondered.  "What could be so important you'd go to all this trouble to hide it?"

"It's not hidden now," Jack pointed out reasonably.

"Maybe Jack is right, maybe you do have to be here.  Or at least...he does!  Remember, you couldn't see the ruins until he came up to the cliff's edge."  Daniel lowered his field glasses, eyeing Jack with rather different interest than before.  "Remember the _last_ time Ancient technology was specifically triggered to operate by Jack?"

"P3R-233!" Carter exclaimed, brightening.  "The download of the Ancient database.  And this _is_ one of the destinations the colonel programmed into the SGC dialling computer from that database."

Somehow, this stuff always worked out to be Jack's fault.

"There must be a way across," Carter said, also eyeing Jack speculatively.

"I'm not taking one small step, let alone a giant leap, for anyone."

Carter and Daniel both tried [unsuccessfully] to look as if this notion had never entered their innocent scientific minds.

"Let's be logical," Carter said, a little pouty he wasn't entering into the spirit of the thing and marching boldly out into the blue.  "The Ancients travelled by Stargate."

"The Stargate is on this side of the gorge," Daniel said.

"Which suggests somewhere on this side of it, there has to be a means of crossing the gorge," Carter speculated.  "Concealed, like the gorge itself was concealed until we were on top of it."

Heading up the line to get to the bottom of it, Jack wasn't impressed for what passed for logic around these parts. 

"For all you know, they could fly," he argued.   "There could be a runway or Ancient helipad we can't see, someplace on the far side of the gorge, along with a perfectly respectable, not to say visible, bridge."

"An invisible bridge?" Carter mused, so struck by the beauty of it, she ignored what Jack actually saying.

"Were not the Romans, human inheritors of the remnants of Ancient culture, famed for the straightness of the roads they constructed, DanielJackson?" Teal'c suavely enquired.

Daniel and Carter looked at one another, grinned, then broke into a canter for the Stargate to investigate mathematically and/or archaeologically straight lines from gate to gorge.

"I forgot what they were like together," Jack commented, stooping at the same time Teal'c did to grab a handful of dirt and small stones.  Great minds, huh?  

Jack sprinkled his first handful out over the cliff edge, Teal'c efficiently reloading as they ambled along, watching to see if the dirt disappeared or landed in mid-air. 

"How annoyed will they be if we find it first?"

Teal'c did his dark, smug thing again.

They found the bridge when Jack walked into the decorative column at the end of it.  At least, it felt decorative.  The part of it that smacked him in the face, anyway.  He felt it up and down and around and around for a bit, which made Teal'c look at him strangely, then radioed Daniel and Carter to come make it work.

The kids arrived at a gallop, bursting enthusiasm as well as lungs.  They were so keen, they didn't even mind Jack had beaten them to it, courtesy of his anti-scientific method, known as 'poking around.'

Daniel took over in the feeling-up department, sensitive fingers playing over air while Carter couldn't resist tapping a foot around in front of her until she found her own column to play with.  This was apparently extremely scientific method, and not at all like poking around.

"Got it!" Daniel exclaimed, pressing different bits of air in rapid succession, then triumphantly hitting a final something.

Nothing happened.

"Jack?"

Jack leaned in, incidentally quite close to Daniel, to press the something.

The bridge appeared.

It had an on/off switch.

There were lots of carved symmetrical columns evenly spaced the entire width of the span, which were going to give Daniel plenty to read on the way across, with sturdy balustrades to prevent the unwary getting a brief flying lesson.  It was a decently solid-looking bridge, fairly upscale and decorative.

But still...SG-1 just looked at it.

It was never the same when you knew how the trick was done.

Before the squabbling stopped over who'd be load-testing the bridge, Jack had a moment of genius.  He sent Teal'c back for F.R.E.D.

"Hoping your paperwork takes the plunge, Sir?" Carter asked, as sarcastically as she dared.

Jack leaned in again, slightly closer to Daniel than before, pressing the off-switch.  "Solved the mystery of the missing energy signature, Major?"

Carter looked down at her doodad.  Her lips moved as she didn't say a very bad word.  At least, not out loud.  Smacking her doodad upside its display didn't improve the quality of the data on this occasion.  Neither did shaking it.

Jack flipped the bridge the bird.

"Energy signature's back," Carter said unnecessarily, frowning at the once again visible bridge and then across it, at the ruins, while Daniel went over to check out the Ancient graffiti on the second column. 

"What's powering the rest of it?" she wondered aloud.  "The false telemetry fed into the UAV's sensors had to be transmitted from somewhere.  And there has to be some kind of dampening field to conceal the larger power source and the location of the data transmission from our instrumentation."

Carter looked at the ruins with fresh eyes, and then she and Jack both looked at Daniel, so conspicuously silent they hadn't noticed it until now.

"It's nothing sinister," Daniel said reassuringly.  "It's just..."  He hesitated.  "Advice."

"Advice?  On?" Carter asked.

"Lay down your burdens."

"You can do that at Holiday Inn!" Jack snapped, a knee-jerk reaction to the unforgivable pop psychology of the biggest Mother of them all.

"That's a lot of column for such a short translation, Daniel," Carter noted, getting concerned. 

"I immediately knew the fire was candlelight and this particular meal was cooked a long time ago," Daniel said wryly.

"I'm sorry?" Carter didn't follow.

"Me too," Daniel said lightly.  "The Ancients tend to be long on rambling allegorical riddles and short on point."

Forgetting his snit, Jack began to see the light.

"Was that a _straight answer_?" he asked Daniel, deeply moved.  "Did you just give me the facts, get to the point, cut to the chase?"

Cute as he could be, Daniel modestly shrugged off the true heroism of his verbal restraint.

"A _leetle_ more context next time," Carter advised him with a twinkle, holding her thumb and forefinger an inch or so apart in friendly illustration.

"But a definite A for effort!" Jack praised delightedly.

Daniel's shoulder nudged his for a shy second or so. 

His inhibitions seemed to be melting faster than Jack's easy, long-practiced restraint.  Things were getting so interesting, it was probably for the best Teal'c arrived just then with the sacrificial F.R.E.D.

"The MALP is lighter, shouldn't we send that across first?" Carter suggested, honour-bound  to fight her C.O.'s evil plan with logic, but not hopeful of the outcome. 

Jack was slightly closer to logic than he was to shame, but tended not to embrace either as a lifestyle choice.

"We might need it," he explained.

Daniel chuckled, a nice sound, one only Jack was really used to hearing, and even then only when the two of them were tucked under the blankets and away from the world. 

Now everyone was hearing it, without any hint of the usual self-mocking undertone, or the uncomfortable sense the joke was always going to be on Daniel. 

The effect on SG-1 was fairly electric. 

The goofy good times were rolling.

As was F.R.E.D., stubbornly refusing to plunge to squealing-tyred, fiery destruction.

Jack had to accept [grudgingly] the mission wasn't _all_ going his way.

After some discussion, they decided to leave the MALP on this side of the gorge in case the non-visible, non-detectable, but definitely-probably-there-field dampened it too, then set out across the bridge in their usual formation, each doing their usual thing.  Carter scanned, Daniel filmed, Teal'c loomed and Jack slouched along keeping both eyes on all of them. 

It was comfortable, falling into place the way he liked it to be.

Carter and Teal'c had gotten along okay with Quinn, Carter had even said she'd miss the guy, but it was never this easy, this natural for them, not with Quinn in Daniel's place, in his lab, in his books, using his stuff.  They never had been able to completely separate Quinn's presence on the team from his part in Daniel's absence from it.

Jack never tried. 

The gaping wound where Daniel was meant to be, that had never healed.  It wasn't only that he'd missed his lover and his friend with an ache that never quit, he'd missed the _man_.  What he was and the way he was, so much life and energy in him.  Even in Daniel's absence, the pull of the Stargate could not be denied, but Jack felt only the weight of it, the responsibility, the thrill fading to grey, to routine.

So much of their life together had been centred here, in their team, and without Daniel's anchoring presence, Jack had drifted.  More arrogant and less sure, with the constant irritant of Quinn to keep the memories alive and the anger roiling in the pit of his stomach.

He had something to thank the man for, in the end.  If not for despising Quinn, if not for his loathing, he would have gone mad, missing Daniel.

Quinn was a canker; once removed, relief was sweet, immediate.

Maybe Carter and Teal'c would never admit it, even to themselves, but Jack knew they felt the same.  He wasn't the only one butting in, hanging out, jealously guarding Daniel's time and privacy.  He only had the most to gain.

It was great to see his team functioning again, relaxing into the familiar rhythms and routines, to hear the bickering and the banter, even [this was a stretch] the bright ideas Daniel and Carter were bouncing back and forth as they walked. 

The bridge led to an arched entryway into the main structure with tall, figured metal doors sliding open at their cautious approach. 

The man of the moment almost dropped his camera when the suns hit a centrepiece fountain so stupendously ornate it made the Trevi look like a fire hydrant. 

The design was deceptively simple, only sheaves of grass and the wild flowers they'd seen on the way here, but the execution was out of this world.  Each single grass stem was rendered individually in gold, somehow light and flexible enough to rustle and sway with the slightest movement of the air.  Every flower was sculpted from a glittering crystal of dazzling colour.  The tiers of the fountain itself were constructed from a warm, creamy marble cupped in wreaths of yet more flowers.  Butterflies, birds and even little mice peeped out through the grasses here and there.

Awed, the team walked around the fountain slowly, savouring, trailing hands in the cool water when Carter's mineral analysis declared it safe.  They walked around the fountain again, then again, picking out every exquisite detail in hushed tones.

"This _doesn't_ make you want to pee?" Jack asked incredulously, expertly breaking the spell.  It was a trifle on the mean side, sure, but he _did_ have a rep to uphold.

"What _is_ this place?" Carter muttered to herself, running reverent fingers across the gold-threaded marble walls as she efficiently swept the room with her doodad.

Over by the entrance doors, Teal'c found a panel that looked like it duplicated the bridge controls.  Jack promptly hit the off-switch and got Daniel to film the F.R.E.D. walking in the air, which had to be a contender in the monthly SGC newsletter's caption competition.

Eager to see more, they walked on, emerging into a small, sunny courtyard which had many doorways and staircases heading off in every direction, all radiating out from a mirror-calm pool reflecting the sky.

Carter dutifully scanned the area, then shrugged noncommittally when she came up short on energy signatures, mysterious or otherwise.

They could have split up, covered the ground that much quicker, but Jack found himself loathe to give the order to break up the party.  They didn't get so many missions that didn't blow up in their faces, he was in a rush to push it on this one.

Daniel, their resident expert on things he had no idea about, randomly selected a staircase going up.  This was at least vaguely tactically sound; they could start at the top and work their way down, which meant the worst would soon be over.

The stairs were interesting, at least to Carter and Daniel.  Reminiscent of art deco in their symmetrical design and decoration, they were framed with metal and looked to be made of glass, handily lighting up ahead of you as you climbed them. 

Disappointingly, they stayed lit, robbing Jack of an opportunity to express himself. 

Carter scanned the crap out of them but the hidden power source stubbornly stayed hidden.

At the top of the staircase was another courtyard with another pool, this one a substantial horizon pool, looking like it was going over the edge into the gorge on one side, and into the waterfall on the other.  The two sides of the pool bordered by the shiny red-gold courtyard tiles had shallow steps running their entire length, leading down into the inviting water.

Hearing the rapids, Jack ambled across to look over the side, finding another terrace pool not far below.  Smaller than the swimming pool, it looked to be fairly deep, with unmistakeable, and fairly impressive, Olympic-class diving regalia.

Fascinated by these discoveries, something of a first for SG-1, Daniel trotted back down the stairs to the first courtyard, then through one of the open doorways into an unmistakeable changing room, bright and vividly tiled in shades of blue and green across its floor, walls and high domed roof.  There were niches to put clothes, low benches to sit, shiny surfaces to primp in front of.

The heat coming from the walls and the floor was familiar too; enough to prick bare skin with sweat, lull the body until it hit screaming cold water.

The water here wasn't cold.  It was steaming through a complicated series of randomly sized interlocking pools interspersed with comfy places to lounge, nap and chat, surrounded by an almost photo-real mosaic of the gorge as it would be if you could look through the walls.

Now, Daniel had an idea, and for once, Jack knew where he was going. 

Water, water everywhere! 

"It's a spa!" Daniel said gleefully.

"A spa?" Carter glanced from the steaming pools to the display on her doodad, then back again.  "A _spa_?"

"Teal'c was right, this _is_ Roman-influenced."

A gratified Teal'c inclined his head in that way he did, graciously accepting his due praise.

"Bathing was such a huge part of Roman culture, a genuinely communal experience," Daniel explained eagerly.  "And to see it here, in an Ancient structure!"  He was thrilled, bounding from pool to pool like Tigger.  "This must be the tepidarium, the warm room," he speculated happily, launching into the kind of flowing, single-shot panoramic sweep that would have had a critical Sundance audience on its sandaled feet cheering. 

Tactfully staying out of shot, Teal'c patiently followed Daniel, keeping him out of hot water. 

"Through there, those doorways either end?" Daniel called.  "I'm guessing those will be the caldarium, or hot room, and the frigidarium, the cold room."

"The Ancients built a spa?"  Carter couldn't seem to get a handle on it.  "And then went to all these lengths to conceal it?"  She looked around, wide-eyed.  It was all very pretty, but... "What in the world for?"

"Same reasons people switch off their cell phones and retreat to all those exclusive, private spas back home, I'd imagine," Jack said.  "R & R."

"But...all this _power_ , Sir!"

"Why not?  If it's okay to use all this power and technology on bigger space guns, faster ships and funkier force fields, why not a place to kick back and do a little navel gazing?"

"Lay down your burdens," Daniel interjected whimsically, grinning over it now that [for once] the Ancients had a point.

"Exactly!" Jack said jovially.  "They probably built the bridge invisible so it wouldn't spoil the view."

Carter opened her big scientific mouth, then her face crinkled with amusement before she could speak.  "They probably did," she laughed, giving in gracefully.

"As for fooling our instruments, I can only say I'd be pretty pissed if I kept having to get out of my bath to fend off space invaders."

Carter looked at the pool again.  "It all makes a horrible kind of sense."

"Horrible?" Daniel protested.  "Are you kidding?  This is amazing, Sam.  This is a true slice of Ancient life and culture, another connection from their history to ours.  It's clean, it's peaceful.  Beautiful."

"You're telling me!" Jack enthused.  "We've got the whole week to party at Club Ancient."

"Sir!" Carter protested feebly.

"Anyone else thinking volleyball?"

 

* * *

 

 

"I've made an amazing discovery!" Jack gloated as he came bounding out into the small courtyard with the reflecting pool, their appointed rendezvous.

"Even more amazing than the Jacuzzi, Sir?" Sam enquired, quirking an eyebrow.

"We're talking science on this one, Carter, not recreation," Jack said loftily.

Curious, ever-careful of visual cues, Daniel watched the play of emotion over Sam's face; suspicion, fascination, mild horror, resignation. 

Even in the short time he'd been back, he'd realised no one rose to Jack's bait more readily, or more often than Sam.  She even came off worse than him, the team amnesiac, technically the tactically superior target.

Unfortunately for one of the biggest brains on the planet, knowing she was being played did nothing to prevent her from being reeled in as the butt of Jack's marauding humour for possibly the millionth time.

"A scientific discovery?" Sam asked, regretting it already.  "An _amazing_ scientific discovery?"  From _Jack_?  She couldn't imagine.

Gratified, Jack went into his favourite used-car-salesman mode, his energetic whole-body bull. "Memory rock!" he announced dramatically.

Sharing a quick, slightly appalled glance with a sympathetic Daniel, Sam looked giddy.

"So, do we get an explanation or are you holding out for the demonstration?" Daniel asked Jack, in some trepidation.

Jack beamed at him.

Daniel crumbled so fast, he made Sam look armour-plated.  She wasn't shy in making him aware of this.

Trooping along sheepishly in Jack's expansive wake, they were led [too quickly for sightseeing] along a corridor, down several shallow flights of stairs, then along another corridor and into an opened room, considerably smaller than any of the other chambers they'd explored so far. 

It had the characteristic arched metal doors and vaulted ceiling, large windows letting the strong light stream in, fabulously intricate mosaic tiling, this time depicting a romantically idealised garden, and the same sort of bench they'd seen in the tepidarium, but on a larger scale.  A smaller doorway inside the room led to a dressing room and a sunken bath of such epically luxurious proportions, it demanded asses' milk and asps.

Stunning décor, but every footstep echoed in a dead space long stripped bare.  It engaged Daniel intellectually, but didn't [how could he put this?]...it didn't touch him. 

He turned questioningly to Jack, who was hovering excitedly by the bench.  Daniel guessed, if this was a bedroom, then it was meant to be the bed.  Since there was nothing else in the room [not even an energy signature] he and Sam converged on Jack and the bed, get it over with.

"The Ancients kick NASA ass!"  Jack couldn't wait for them; he dropped on the bed like a stone, sat stock still until they came up to him, then leapt up with a 'Ta Da!' sort of gesture.

There, on the edge of the bed, was the perfect imprint of Jack's ass.

"Memory rock!" Jack crowed.  "Like memory foam, only cooler."

"And harder," Daniel joked, giving the bed an experimental prod.  It certainly looked like stone, a creamy, natural stone burnished to a satin sheen, but it immediately warmed to the touch, moulding itself around the contours of the body.  "Amazing," he smiled, completely susceptible to the soft, proud brown eyes fixed hopefully on their faces.

"I guess you know where _we'll_ be sleeping tonight!" Jack declared happily.

It was a joke.  Just a joke. 

Only...for a second, a fraction of a second, Daniel thought Jack meant it the way it sounded. 

A very short, very _long_ fraction of a second, a second where he went red, his throat closed, his mouth opened, his lungs quit, he went hot and numb all over, and his skin got two sizes too small.

Jack _winked_ at him.

Daniel gulped.

Jack _did_ mean it the way it sounded.

Didn't he?

Did he?

A friendly hand on Daniel's shoulder did nothing to clear his head or help his breathing. 

It was second nature to him to watch everything, to question, to analyse.  It was what kept him sane.  Sane and functioning as he picked his way along in the dark. 

He was getting to know Jack, but not half so well as he was starting to know himself.

He was deathly afraid.  Knew what scared him most.  Couldn't look away.

Suddenly Sam was there, there for him, quiet, questioning, waiting, rubbing his arm.

Somewhere [it seemed a great distance] Jack was asking Sam to check where Teal'c had got to with those supplies he'd requested from the SGC.  She was loathe to leave Daniel, but he was in trouble.  She knew who he needed.

He still felt her warmth when he moved, walking hard into Jack, putting both arms around him, pressing into him with the whole of his body. 

He felt so much, he didn't know what else to do.  He didn't know how to show love. 

Love.

Intellectually comprehended, catalogued with the surface memory of a long-dead wife, with guilt and relief combined, love was not in his experience.

Shaken with great chills, he burned with it.

Jack knew.  Rock-steady and gentle, he held Daniel as hard and close as he needed.

It took too long for Daniel to know Jack needed too, to sense the urgency in the arms around him, the thud of an equally labouring heart.  Blind, he did what he'd seen couples in the village do, lifting his face to touch his mouth, stiff and hopeful, to Jack's.  He remembered it was called kissing, remembered this as Jack kissed him back, kissed him so hard he bent back, came back, kissed back.  He kissed.  They kissed.

When his legs went from under him, they thudded down on the edge of the bed, choking in air, Jack's shoulder butting his, Jack's heat on him, a rough hand spread wide on his thigh.  Lips stinging.

"I know this," Daniel whispered hoarsely.  "I know you."

"You do."

"Why don't I remember?"

"Maybe..." Jack hesitated, his compelling hand hesitated.  "Maybe it's too hard for you.  It's too much.  Too...important, I mean."

Important.  Yes.  It was everything.  Jack was everything to him.

"I love you."

Hearing those words, Jack's hand grabbed for his face the way Daniel grabbed for memory, for understanding of who he was.

He was loved.  That's who he was.  Jack's love.

They kissed again, more certainly than before, more openly, Jack's mouth moving softly over Daniel's, coaxing trust.

Jack wasn't angry.

"Was this...were we...before?" Daniel stuttered in shock.  He should be able to answer that question.  He should know.  Jack deserved he should know.

"Don't worry about it," Jack said, firm and warm at the same time.  "I think what's happening right now is enough to be dealing with, don't you?"

"I can hardly think at all," Daniel blurted.

Jack felt this was pretty much as it should be.

Daniel was scared, terribly confused, but it felt right to him, Jack was right, it was as it should be.  He was glad for it.  The enormity of the risk he'd taken, the instinct that had taken him without thought or question to Jack, was terrifying to him.  Wanting had overwhelmed him, all of it too quick, too...too... _necessary_...for him to feel relief his courage had paid off.  Not yet.

He knew gratitude. 

Jack was with him.  Jack was...happy. 

He was shaking, but Jack was quick to draw him in, quick to hold him.  Jack asserted the right to do this.  He was to be leaned on.  Relied on.  It was made clear. 

Daniel's hot-cold cheek found Jack's shoulder, and he rested.

 

* * *

 

 

Daniel was dazed and pathetically confused, smiling at everything.

Believing he'd had the expected traumatic amnesia stress meltdown, Sam and Teal'c took his helpless abstractedness in stride.  In fact, they seemed relieved, as if he'd been coping too well until now, on some false high that must lead inevitably to a fall.  Now he had [in their eyes] crashed, they were coping better with him.   In fact, they were quite enjoying taking care of him and making a general fuss.

Belatedly, he realised his hard-won self-sufficiency had set them at a distance from him, a frustrating distance they had not been able to close until now.  They had not felt...needed.

Daniel understood needing.

In the small central courtyard, their base of operations, he sat sandwiched between Sam and Teal'c, accepting their kindnesses with a distracted grace that pleased them and amused the relaxed, contented Jack. 

In great good humour, he was fed and watered, included [without in any way contributing] in their considerations of security.  Their situation could not be better.  They had light, power, cover and concealment.  The MALP was secured, the Stargate side of the bridge discreetly rigged with sensors, the F.R.E.D. positioned to block the doors on the spa side, the bridge itself once again invisible.

In Jack's considered opinion, they'd already won the fight for the right to party.  Now they were suitably armed [volleyball and snorkels, courtesy of the always prepared SG-2] and geared-up [swimsuits, courtesy of a small red-headed goddess perfectly willing to prescribe a programme of vigorous aquatic exercise], it was only a matter of time until the whole team was in hot water.

"Thermae," Daniel said, abandoning his attempts to think, to be logical about what was happening between him and Jack.  He couldn't question, consider.  His thoughts scattered and danced in a friendly fog.  He wasn't so afraid as before, but he was making no more sense.  "That's what the Romans would have called baths constructed on this scale and sophistication."

"Thermae," Sam repeated, trying it out.  She liked it, her busy mind revising the report she was mentally composing, inserting the correct terminology.  Thermae.  For Sam it had a better sound, a better feel than spa.  Science, not recreation.

After a moment or two of silence, she looked expectantly at Daniel.

Jack took on an expression of pre-emptive boredom.

Teal'c's eyebrows went stoic.

They waited.

Daniel waited too.

"Thermae?" Sam prompted helpfully, when he failed to speak up.

"This is the part where you tell us everything we didn't want to know about stuff we don't really care about," Jack explained.  "Although I have to admit you have the grace to talk faster than Carter," he added fair-mindedly.  "You don't make any more sense, but I'll give you this, you do get through it quicker."

"I'll take a rain check," Daniel said cheerfully.

"You don't remember?" Sam asked, surprised out of looking daggers at their beloved leader.

"I could probably work it out," Daniel offered demurely.  "If you insist."

"Make it up as you go along?"  Jack grinned appreciatively.  "I thought that was pretty much what you've been doing since our first trip through the gate."

"A little deductive reasoning never...okay, um, _rarely_ hurt anyone," Daniel said, attempting dignity.

"Nothing that couldn't be fixed," Jack agreed easily.

"Even death has proven to be an impermanent state," Teal'c offered up supportively.

"I'm not the only one who's gotten us killed," Daniel protested, not entirely feeling the love.  "We've all had our off days."

Acknowledging the [regrettable] justice of this, SG-1 coughed, shuffled and otherwise avoided another five-star guilt trip down memory lane.

"I am familiar with ancient Roman traditions of bathing," Teal'c announced, looking smug and communicative.

"I've taken a bath or two in my time, and I've got Spartacus on DVD," Jack interjected, briskly cutting Teal'c off at the lecture.

"I prefer showers," Sam said. "But I did take a school trip to Rome when I was fifteen.  And I've seen that movie, I don't remember its name, that art-house movie where the Roman soldiers scrape each other with knives."

"Strigils," Daniel corrected her absently.  "Which movie?"

"I don't remember its name."

"Have I seen it?"

"One of the Roman soldiers is a Christian?  His centurion has the hots for him?"

Jack found this funny.

"But he'd rather die than put out?"

That, not so much.

"I haven't seen it," Daniel decided.  "That's my first pick for movie night taken care of."

"Oh my God!"

"Shut up, Jack.  You didn't hear me complaining about Howard The Dick, did you?"

"Duck," Jack sniffed.  "It's duck, not dick."

"I know what I saw."

"Are you aware that we have wasted more time than if you had indeed recounted all that you knew of Roman bathing rituals?" Teal'c said, eyeing them all a bit coolly.

"More time?" Daniel quibbled, frowning.

"O'Neill would have interrupted long before now."

"He would, wouldn't he?" Daniel said.

"Possibly," Jack said.

"Definitely," the slower-talking Sam said, her expression a trifle sour.

Daniel patted her knee sympathetically.

"So, what've we actually learned about Roman baths?" Jack [much maligned] asked.

"We should be up to our necks in one, not sitting here talking about it?" Daniel suggested.

Jack snapped his fingers delightedly at Daniel.  "I like that attitude!"

"Oh, count me out!" Sam demurred, beating a cowardly retreat before Jack could formulate a plausible command vis a vis mission critical skinny dipping.

Teal'c was happy to take a bath, but not with wacky Jack, who meanly interrupted, and whose excessively virtuous face suggested he was busily formulating fart pranks.

Daniel just wanted to get Jack naked.

Jack was very happy to be got.

It occurred to them both Daniel would have to get naked too, but at this stage of his life, it appeared to be his speciality.

"Not moving too fast?" Jack wondered as they strolled to the tepidarium.

"Not moving fast enough," Daniel said lightly.

"You've thought about this, then?"

"I'm trying to think less and do more."

"You're completely ready to do this?" Jack persisted, stepping out in front of Daniel to administer a small attention-getting shake.  "You're ready for sex?  Sex with me?"

"That's not the point."  Daniel shook his head impatiently.  "The big question here is why you're ready for sex with me.  How you can hold me this way, as if you've done it so many times before it's become second-nature."  He tightened his own hold on Jack, bringing them hard up against each other.  "I like it, by the way.  Your hands on me."

"I feel that you do, yes," Jack deadpanned.

"We were together before."

"We've established that."

"And you're not angry."

"Not at you."

"I left you then."  A wound Daniel could not yet feel, a wound he couldn't leave alone.  "I don't remember you now." 

"And yet, here you are," Jack smiled, the softness back in his eyes, his whole body gentling Daniel deeper into him.

"I knew you'd have me."  Daniel ventured a smile too.  "I can't explain how.  I just knew to come to you."

"I love you," Jack said easily.  "You're smart enough to know that."

Daniel touched his cheek to Jack's, then pulled away, beginning to feel a little shaken. 

To cover, he undressed, not thinking too much about what he was doing.  Leaving his uniform folded neatly on the floor [a recently remembered habit, but one long drilled into him], he got into the nearest smallish pool, sinking down onto the bench running around its exquisitely tiled sides.  The water, a pleasant degree or so warmer than blood temperature, rose to his shoulders as he settled back to watch Jack's approach, openly marvelling at his lean beauty.

"How're you feeling?" Jack asked as he slid gracefully down into the water.

"Lucky," Daniel said frankly.

"I aim to please."

"You're right on target."

"I may never get over these humorous quips and puns of yours."

There were no memories surfacing, nothing but wanting and feeling to guide Daniel, but he reached out regardless, fingers grazing the strong arch of Jack's jaw.  When Jack nuzzled against the palm of his hand, his breath caught.  Unable to vocalise his frustration, the fear he felt that the memories he desired most of all remained stubbornly beyond his reach, he wanted only to touch Jack, to move him, to make a connection. 

He couldn't remember before, not when he was so caught up in the now. 

Jack was not a young man; experience lined his eyes and mouth, his throat.  Grey hair peppered his chest, but beneath it, muscle was sleek, conditioned, receptive.

Jack was everything to Daniel.

"Got a question for you," Jack said, trapping Daniel's worshipping hands beneath his.  "Humour me and answer it, would ya?  I was just wondering if Shamda filled you in on the birds and the bees, if you got the whole City of the Dead sex education thing?"

"Well, there was this one story he had, about the billy goat and the viper," Daniel said innocently. 

 _Viper?_ Jack mouthed incredulously, his eyes watering reflexively.

Pleased with his small victory, Daniel kissed Jack, in a way that felt good.  It seemed to him he needed to have his mouth not just against Jack's, but moving over it.  He needed to suck and bite at Jack's lips, touch tongues, stroke with hands and tongue. 

He needed to be closer, to face Jack, impulsively coming around to sit astride him, the water both supporting and arousing him. 

Too anxious, too needy to willingly betray his ignorance of this act of love, Daniel went with what felt good to him, quietly bringing Jack's hand down between his legs to rest against his sex, exciting the pulse of blood there.  Feeling he must touch Jack in his turn, he held his head high, but couldn't disguise a tremor as he took Jack's hard sex into his own hand and was kissed again. 

To touch and to be touched, Daniel couldn't decide which pleasure was strongest. 

He might have steadied if not for this delicious confusion of wanting everything, at once.  It made him ache and sing in a blazing grind of mouths and skin.  Jack's dark eyes were wide and candid, hollowing him out, drawing him in. 

And in this frenzied, _simple_ rush of heat and touch, Jack was no more gentle than him.

The intensity, the craving built, making his stomach flip, spiralling through his senses, drawing down to pound his sex and clench at the base of his spine.  He needed to fall, he fell for Jack, melting into him in shocked relief as much as release.

"I've got you," Jack crooned, rubbing Daniel's back while he shook, gratefully burying his hot face.  "It's okay, Daniel.  It's okay."

It was.

"Blocking you out," he apologised huskily, nuzzling Jack's accommodating shoulder.  "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Jack.  I..."  He stumbled over the admission.  "I may never remember."

"Sex life failed to flash before your eyes?" Jack asked jokingly, taking it so amazingly well, so completely in his stride.

"I wish I could feel this was a reunion," Daniel fretted, desperately sorry for it.  "Feel it for you, I mean."  He tried to show Jack he was sorry, but Jack grinned, bit his ear and told him to shake it off.  He cared that Daniel was with him now.

"I know better than you this memory thing won't work like you want it," Jack chided, encouraging Daniel's [tactile] expressions of gratitude.  "And what we can't change, we have to let go.  If the memories come, they come.  If they don't, they don't."

Daniel hugged Jack rather convulsively, feeling a bit choked and emotional.  Jack indicated he felt choked too, and Daniel eased off.

"I never thought you'd take it into your head to fall for me again, fall for me now," Jack confided, vulnerable in his open pleasure.

Daniel got protective.  He liked having Jack right where he wanted him, but accepted this could be done without Jack losing _all_ the feeling in his legs.  He slid back onto the bench, coaxing Jack's head to rest on his shoulder, supporting him as he stretched out to float blissfully on the surface of the water.

Jack sighed, a pleasant, murmuring sound, sighed and relaxed, butter under Daniel's caressing hands.  "Mom agrees, you know, if it makes you feel any better.  She told me the first time you came out to the house you may never remember," he said.  "It mattered too much." 

Too much unknown and too much emotion for Daniel to honestly share.  He loved Jack, but he wasn't there yet.  He didn't have the memories, the certainty Jack was feeling.

"You're scared."

He couldn't bear for it all to come crashing down.  Too much had.

"I like _this_ ," Jack said.

"Me too...but..."

"But nothing," Jack argued.  "There was nothing I could do to save you, nothing you could do to save yourself.  We exhausted ourselves and we _failed_."

Daniel could only show Jack, again, he was with him.

"Give me now," Jack said contentedly.  "Give me this."

 

* * *

 

 

There were times in life, Daniel learned, when, as much as you wanted things to work out right, they gave you the finger and smugly went wrong.

His painstakingly surreptitious sortie along to Jack's room was derailed when Sam, whose room was between theirs, suddenly opened her door. 

She beamed at Daniel.

"I knew you'd want to talk," she said happily.  "I've been wanting to talk too," she confided, drawing him into her room and into an entirely unexpected friendly hug.

"I talked to Jack," Daniel protested feebly, nerves jumping at the efficient ambush as he was led over to the memory rock.

"That's good," Sam praised, settling cosily close by his side and keeping hold of his hand.  She was a good tactician; she knew perfectly well how to stop him running away.  "I'm glad.  He's been so much better since you've been back."

"Better?" Daniel queried, more shreds of horny self-involvement melting away.  "Better how?  In what way?"

"Less Jekyll, more Hyde," Sam said frankly.  She grinned, a little amused, a little touched by the eagerness he couldn't quite disguise at Jack's name.

"You're exaggerating," he demurred, real sorrow at Jack's pain complicated by a relief he couldn't force away from himself, relief he had truly meant this much to the one he loved.  He wished he wasn't so needy where Jack was concerned.  Then he wished [wryly] he was better at letting himself off the hook for no greater crime than being human like the rest of them.  Perfection, sainthood, those were not in his grasp.

"Not by much!" Sam snorted.  "When you died, I felt lost.  I went to the colonel and he shut me down harder than he ever has."  She smiled reassuringly when Daniel squeezed her hand in real concern, squeezing back.  "I'm over it," she said.  "It took some time, I was pretty hurt, but I got there in the end.  The colonel, though?  He couldn't talk about it, about you, not then, not ever.  He could not admit you were gone."

What was Daniel to say to that?  How many times could he say he was sorry before it lost all meaning, not only for him, but for everyone?

"Do you miss Jonas too?" was all he found to say.

"He wanted SG-1 at least as badly as me or you," Sam replied in a measured way.  "He worked hard, he stepped up when we needed him."

All of which was fine, but didn't answer the question.

"I sense a but?" Daniel hinted.

"He wasn't you." 

Sam looked down, smiling fondly at Daniel's hand in hers.

"I couldn't imagine this...before."

Daniel didn't follow.

"You would have shied away," Sam explained.  "You wouldn't have taken it, you'd have pulled away from me, been on the other side of the room."

"Was I so bad?" Daniel asked, dismayed.

"Not when _I_ needed _you_ ," Sam said, clear affection shining through.  "You were always there for me, Daniel, always ready to reach out."

"Am I so different than before?" he asked, a little shy.

"I think it's like the colonel says.  Someone lifted all that weight from you, and Daniel, the _real_ Daniel, finally has a chance to show through."

She chuckled when he had no response to that, soft fingers glancing over an oddly burning spot on his cheek.

"There's so much I don't know, so much that isn't coming back to me," he admitted, frustrated.  "I haven't any control."

"Sometimes I think we're not helping," Sam said.  "I think at times we're putting too much pressure on you.  Me, me, remember me!  You know?"

He did know, but tried not to let it show.

Sam wasn't fooled.

"And why should you?" she said bravely.  "You were worked over by an expert, by a power or technology so far beyond our grasp..."  Her voice wobbled, surprising him again.  "Sorry, Daniel.  It's okay, really.  Thinking about what Oma did to you, seeing you work so hard trying to get it all back, I just get so angry."

"If it helps, if this makes a difference," Daniel offered diffidently.  "I believe this was my choice, Sam.  I wanted to come back."

Her face lit eagerly.  "Yes?"

"Yes."

She hugged him again, hugged him hard. 

"I'm glad," she said fiercely.  "I'm not letting this happen to you, not ever again." 

She planted a brisk smacker on his burning cheek, then her hold on him changed, some indefinable quality that flicked a hazy instinct, made him almost want to back away. 

"You remember what you said to me, when we first found you?  I came to see you in your tent, we talked there?  And then _you_ said.."

And that, that purring quality in her voice?

"You asked if we were together."

Looking into gleaming, vampish baby blues, Daniel completely choked.

Sam chuckled delightedly, fiendishly appreciating his evident, unstinting panic. 

"Wish I had my camera," she gloated.  "You should see the look on your face!"

Daniel sat back with a snap, glowering.  So he was easy.  Jack's puckish sense of humour had already established that.  But if _Sam_ could take him, slower-talking, quicker-biting, super-serious Sam, God, his ass was grass.

"That was really good!" she beamed, giving him another fond, faintly superior little pat before rather reluctantly letting him go.  "I really got you going there."

"Not funny, Sam," Daniel grumbled.  "Taking advantage like that."

She opened her eyes to their innocent widest.  "Just triggering memories, Daniel.  Just trying to help."

"I'm remembering alright.  I'm recalling a lot of big-sisterly bossy crap."

Sam was enchanted by his seemingly endearing bitterness and the cuteness of his scowl.

"Just tell me who put you in charge," he demanded.

"I'm older, I'm wiser, I have years of experience keeping tabs on annoying brats, and my brain is..."

He glared at her.

"Slightly more intact."

"You've changed too," Daniel recognised, intending mild offence.  "I don't remember you this light-hearted either."

"I love you," Sam said simply, her giddy mood not abating.  "And I missed you.  Now I have you back.  I'm not messing with that."

"So your friend is safe but the poor amnesiac better watch out?"

"Someone has to keep you sharp or the colonel will eat you alive," Sam explained in great good humour.

This was pretty much what Daniel had been hoping for, yes, when he was sneaking along to Jack's room.

"Come on, Daniel," Sam coaxed.  "Admit it.  I got you pretty good."  Sisterly Sam was lethal, making with the big, limpid, manipulative pools of her eyes.

Daniel grumped uncommunicatively and was hugged for his pains.

It seemed now he was got, Sam wasn't giving him up any time soon.

"Don't worry about the colonel and his idea of coaching," she advised with a kindly grin.  "We'll go down -- I mean up -- to the infinity pool at 05.00 and I'll teach you how to swim."

Daniel sadly crossed off a potentially amatory experience with Jack from his already limited mental list, smiled helplessly back at her, wishing for an entirely selfish minute he didn't love Sam too.

 

* * *

 

 

Daniel opened drowsy morning eyes, barely stifling a yelp when he saw a blur looking a lot like Sam.

"Morning, lazy bones," she greeted him cheerily, abandoning her laptop.

Daniel didn't know what shocked him more, that he'd felt comfortable enough to fall asleep in her room, or that Sam seemed completely cool with it.  He couldn't recall a particular incident, but he thought of her as careful.  More careful than this.  He thought they both were.

"I don't remember falling asleep!" he blurted.

"Well, now you're awake, you can get your butt off that bed and into your swimsuit.  We've got work to do."

He was efficiently bossed into the dressing room, out of his uniform, into his swimsuit, out of the room, along several hallways, up several flights of stairs, through the courtyard and into the pool.  It only occurred to him when they were in the water Sam had kept him effectively distracted from noticing her in her swimsuit.  A rather fetching high-cut, low-cut skimpy thing in blue.

"That doesn't look regulation," he commented doubtfully, trying not to see a lot of smooth, lovely skin. 

"Look at you!" Sam retorted, experiencing much the same difficulty.

Daniel had to give her that one.  He was low-cut, quite a bit tighter, equally skimpy, and a darker shade of blue. 

"Teal'c picked these out?" he asked doubtfully.

"You don't remember Major Ferretti much, do you?"

"Worse than Jack?"

"Lou Ferretti is Colonel O'Neill's hero."

Daniel thought about this, then he grinned.  In the context of sex, a touch of insouciant fun would probably make the whole thing go better.

"Let's start by getting you comfortable in the water," Sam suggested.

Daniel bounced off a short way down the pool until he was safely up to his chin in water.

Grinning, Sam came up close behind him, hooking her arms beneath his armpits.  "Lean back, rest your head against my shoulder," she instructed.  "Now, relax, trust me and do what I tell you."

"Yes, ma'am," he agreed smartly.

"Relax," Sam said again.  "Don't tense up, Daniel. Don't try to brace and hold your weight.  Lean on me and let the water lift you."

It was what he'd done with Jack the night before, only the platonic version.  Sam was steady and her encouraging hands stayed where they were supposed to be.  It took Daniel a while to get in the way of it, but first one foot was off the pool bottom and then the other drifted up to join it.  Sam supported him easily, patiently urging him to relax, to trust her and the water.  After some splashing, sinking and sputtering, he got more co-ordinated, feeling a real sense of accomplishment when he finally stretched out, floating on his back.

Sam eased back until his head rested on her outstretched hands, then, when he was ready, she let go. 

The water held him, embraced him as she'd promised it would.

Sam floated companionably at his side, the suns stroked and the cool water held him.  Daniel relaxed.  Not the careful unclenching of tight muscle, but the real deal, thoughts slowing to peace of mind, a flow of contentment and comfort. 

Water lapped at his belly, shook his balance, but a vast, capable hand was quick to steady him.

Teal'c floated too, a serene, sheltering presence.

Daniel missed Jack, but found he was thinking very much like him.  Give me now, he thought, surrounded by friends.  Give me this.

 

* * *

 

 

Day 2 of their mission, SG-1 plumbed the depths and scaled the heights of their five star Ancient facility.  Every hallway and chamber was systematically scoured, scanned, filmed and catalogued.  Finding new architectural wonders and artistic delights at every turn, their day passed in a pleasant buzz of purposeful enthusiasm.

About ready to call it a day, the male members of SG-1 were engaged in a lively discussion of the assorted horrors and wonders of MREs when Carter radioed in to summon them to an imposing, low slung terrace with a spectacular panoramic view of the sheeting waterfall.

"I've made a discovery," Carter announced.

Jack, a people person, deduced from her tone this was possibly, just possibly, their fault.

"What discovery?" he asked.  "Is it as good as mine?"  Considering the newfound glories of his memory rock, he thought not.

"Water, water everywhere," Carter said.

"Was that a hint?"

"Can we have a broader hint?" their memory-challenged member requested.

"I've found the energy source," Carter explained, embarrassed, as if she was making excuse.  "Turns out I was looking in the wrong place.  I mean, these are the Ancients!"

"Broader, Carter, broader."

"I was looking for a zebra that turned out to be a mule."  Carter jerked a thumb behind her at the thundering waterfall.  "Hydroelectric power.  Low-tech, ecologically friendly and blindingly obvious, given all the heated pools and baths we have about the place."

"No need to sound so glum about it," Jack advised pleasantly, ambling over to the parapet with Daniel and Teal'c to take a closer look.  "The mystery is still solved."

"I'm not doing any better," Daniel confided, trying to cheer Carter up.  "It's all very beautiful, of course, and of tremendous historical significance because the structure is completely intact, but the visitors here were taking a complete break from their reality.  The attraction was a simple existence.  Based on the snippets of Roman history I've recalled today, I believe the Ancients would have gathered here to socialise, to talk and share ideas.  It's a retreat."

"The carvings on the walls?" Carter asked.

"Decorative."

"Ah."

"You're telling me there's nothing sinister about this place?" Jack asked, somewhat surprised.  "No dark secrets, hidden chambers, wandering hostiles, booby traps, big guns?"

"How often does that happen?" Daniel said.

"Exactly!" Jack agreed.

"Exactly?  Exactly what?"

"What?"

"That wasn't a rhetorical question, Jack.  That was a question.  An actual question in search of an actual answer."

"Huh?"

"How often does that happen?  I mean, how often does it happen that nothing happens?  On a mission, I mean."

"Never," Teal'c stated firmly. 

"Never," Carter agreed.

"At least, not until now," Jack said.

"So it wouldn't be complete dereliction of duty for you to, say, come help me work on my backstroke?" Daniel enquired, with another of those cute, flirty winks at Jack.

Sadly for Jack, at this quite interesting juncture, Teal'c and Carter indicated they were equally available [and more experienced] swim coaches and perfectly amenable to the change of plan.  The team that played together, stayed together.

 

* * *

 

 

When Daniel sidled in with his particular wide-eyed, meltingly hopeful expression, Jack figured if Major General George Hammond had been in the bed, even the old man would have just scooted over to make room.

His easy smile drew Daniel to him, easy like moth to flame.

They looked at one another in the moonlight as Daniel stripped with dignified unsteadiness, all nervy fingers and brilliant eyes.

If this was new for Daniel, Jack had been waiting. 

He'd waited all of this time, believing himself beyond hope, stubbornly holding on when hope was gone. 

Daniel was all hope and emotion, quivering as he slid gratefully into Jack's arms.  Daniel was _here_ , here with him, large as life, clinging to Jack in fear and wonder, parched and soaking him in.  Daniel buried his face against Jack's, an odd sound rumbling his chest, climbing his throat.  It closed him like a fist, rigid with old, bewildered pain, then he was clear of it, shaking with relief.

"I love you," Daniel whispered, choked and happy, clumsy with feeling as he kissed Jack.  So much feeling, new and old, remembered and forgotten. 

Daniel was opening up, magically responsive to Jack's slow, soothing hands.  Nothing explicitly sexual, it wasn't about that.  It was just his experience, knowing Daniel in all his moods.  Knowing how to touch him, how to reach him.  How to love him.

Hands, body, mouth. 

Jack knew how to love Daniel, how to love him and more.  Much, much more.  He could have made Daniel's body sing so easily, but he held back, held on, stroking Daniel softly through all his confusion, grounding him.  There was confidence in his tenderness, easiness in the unforced intimacy.

He loved Daniel.  It was that simple.

Under his hands, Daniel got how simple it really was.  Under his hands, the strain and uncertainty were coaxed away.  Daniel got him.  He got Jack.  Amazed and excited, looking like he'd been handed the world heaped on a plate and hardly knew what to do with it, he got Jack but _good_.

He loved, and he was loved.

A two-way thing, this love.  Jack had been through this.  He had nothing to prove.  Damage had been done to both of them, but it was in the past.  It was behind them. Daniel could trust in that.  He would not be hurt by anything Jack did, and, maybe more important to Daniel, he wouldn't hurt Jack. 

Jack was there and he was through waiting.  Daniel Jackson was stone in love with him.

Hands, bodies and mouths quickened as they made love, Jack teaching Daniel how they both liked to be touched.  They had a rhythm for this, specific to them, a driving, supple slide of sweat soaked bellies, hips and thighs, of liquid tongues and cocks, maddening, delicious, deliberate.  Out of their minds, grinding down to skin and bone and wracking need.

Daniel was beyond speech, beyond thought, dazzled, brilliant and filled up with Jack.

Everything old was new again.

 

* * *

 

 

SG-1 were forced to return to base rather sooner than they'd hoped, but actually much later than expected.  George Hammond was a wily old dog, but even he couldn't stave off the inevitable recall, not when they had nothing of any value to report.  At least, nothing of value to the people footing the SGC's bills.

When the team stepped out onto the gateroom ramp, they were greeted by Hammond, the defence team, and a contingent of pissed men in black.

"Debrief, General?" Jack offered instantly, showing real nobility.

"Sorry, Colonel.  These -- gentlemen -- have more pressing matters to discuss."

"Dr. Jackson," one of the men in black greeted Daniel, giving Sam a hard look.

"Agent Barrett," Sam informed Daniel.

"I know.  Didn't you take us hostage one time?"

"Hostage?" Barrett blinked.  "If you mean that my team and I apprehended you while you and Major Carter were attempting to interfere in a sanctioned NID operation..."

"We escaped," Daniel reminded Sam happily.

"Could you come this way, Dr. Jackson?" Agent Barrett requested formally, wisely ignoring the provocation.

"Might as well get it over," Daniel said philosophically.  "Go on without me," he advised his teammates.  "This, er, this won't take long."

"The amnesia thing," Sam told Agent Barrett pleasantly.  "I'll stick around, if you don't mind."

"We do," another man in black responded.

"Tough," Jack said, patting his P-90 fondly.

"General!" the other man in black complained.  "Can you order these people to give up their weapons?"

"They're not going to shoot us, Benson," Barrett muttered in an irritated aside, rightly embarrassed by his henchman's stupidity.

"I'm not so sure about that," muttered the man in black nearest Teal'c.

"Daniel?" Jack enquired formally.  "What do you remember of your time ascended?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing," Jack repeated for the edification of the men in black.  "Nada.  Zip.  Zilch.  Bupkus." 

"Good enough?" Sam said to Agent Barrett.

Barrett saw the humour in it, or just really liked Sam.  Either way there was maybe some hope for him.

SG-1 surrendered their weapons, the Jaffa contingent with a fair amount of glowering, menace and ill-grace.

"A room has been prepared on Level 16 for your discussion with Dr. Jackson," Hammond told the men in black. 

"Discussion, eh?" Jack rubbed his hands together in gleeful anticipation.  "Nothing I love more than a good chat."

"You're not invited, Colonel," Benson retorted.

"And yet, I'm going anyway."

"As am I," Teal'c asserted.

"Count me in," said Sam.

"General?" Benson protested.

"Forgive me, agents, but isn't your objective here to ascertain memories and experiences Dr. Jackson retains from his time ascended?"  It was obvious from the general's tone a big old shoe was about to drop.  "Then you should welcome Colonel O'Neill, Teal'c and Major Carter's contributions to your discussion because, as it stands, they're the only ones who retain any memory of Dr. Jackson's actions while ascended."

SG-1 gazed at him in frank admiration.

"He's good," Jack acknowledged.

"Mission debriefing in one hour," Hammond instructed SG-1.

"An hour?" Benson sputtered, outraged.

"Told you this wouldn't take long," Daniel said insouciantly, falling into step behind Jack, who was marching off to assume control of the room prepared, hence the discussion.

When they got to the room on Level 16, it contained only a broad steel table with four chairs set down one side and one chair on the other.  SG-1 took the four chairs and left it to the four men in black to fight it out over the other.  The mood of the men in black was not improved by this, or by having to turn around the camera and redirect the recording equipment.

SG-1 smiled for the camera.

"Let's begin," Agent Barrett said.  "I'm NID Agent Malcolm Barrett, accompanied by agents Bob Benson, Bill Barnes and Ben Bolt."

"Sounds like a damn law firm," Jack muttered, repositioning the microphone to his liking.  "And, for the record, the good guys are Colonel Jack O'Neill, USAF, Major Samantha Carter, USAF, Dr. Daniel Jackson and Teal'c."

"We're all on the same side, Colonel," Barrett assured him.

"Oh, I doubt that."

"Me too," Daniel said.  "You could be rogue agents for all we know."

"I happen to have been heading up that particular investigation, Dr. Jackson, and I can vouch for these agents," Barrett said.  "The NID has cleaned house.  You have my word on it."

"Your word?  And who can vouch for you?" Daniel asked. 

Barrett looked at Sam.

"He has helped us out on occasion," she admitted a trifle reluctantly.

"Helping himself in the process," Jack said to the microphone.

"These hostilities are pointless," another agent, Barnes or Bolt, said.  "We're just trying to get to the truth."

"The truth?" Daniel leaned in for the camera.  "I don't remember anything," he said clearly into it.

"You'll forgive us if we don't take your word for it, Dr. Jackson," Barnes or Bolt said.

"No, no, pretty sure I won't."

"He really doesn't remember," Sam said to Agent Barrett.

"Why don't we let Dr. Jackson tell us what he remembers," Barnes or Bolt -- no, this time it was Benson -- suggested.

"Dying," Daniel said promptly.  "I remember dying.  Slowly and quite painfully."

"And then?"

"Waking up.  Stripped of my memories..."

"And your clothes," Jack interjected.  "The locals on Vis Uban called him Arrom, naked one.  He was stripped bare-assed naked and left on an alien planet for us to find."

"Thank you, Dr. Jackson," Benson said sarcastically, not liking the colonel.

"See, it's the part _between_ the dying and the coming back that we're interested in," Barrett said.

"And did you ever imagine in your entire career you'd be saying that?" Jack snorted.

"We're all well aware of the import of Dr. Jackson's experiences here, Colonel."

"Then why can't you respect them and leave him alone to recover?" Sam asked.

"We're getting off point again," Barrett warned.  "It's your time ascended we're interested in."

"I've got nothing."

"I have.  I've got something, like the general said."  Jack preened for the camera.  "When I was de-snaked and being slowly tortured to death and revived again and again by Ba'al, Daniel dropped by to console with me."

"I did?" Daniel was shocked.  "That's all?" he asked, horrified Jack could have needed him so much and he'd done so little.  What was _wrong_ with him?

"Not all.  You did try to get me to ascend with you."

"I did?"

"Didn't work out.  You settled for using your mysterious ways to bust me out."

"Oh," Daniel said, flattened.  What with the men in black, the cameras and microphones, he had to be content with the bare bones of it for now.  Jack must think he had good reason to have kept this from him, but they were going to have to talk about it, and soon.  He needed to know how Jack felt about what happened to him, and the part Daniel had played, before he could work out how he felt about it himself.

"I too had a similar experience," Teal'c stated.  "My master Bra'tac and I survived the ambush at Kresh'tar but were both mortally wounded.  We were forced to share a symbiote for three days while awaiting rescue.  Daniel Jackson appeared to me then in a vision and did not leave my side."  He smiled warmly at Daniel.

"And when the Abydonians were threatened by Anubis," Sam piped up, "Daniel came here to warn Colonel O'Neill of the danger and Anubis's search for the Eye of Ra."

"The Abydonians were subsequently destroyed," Barnes or Bolt retorted, unmoved.

"Not destroyed," Jack snapped.  "Ascended."

"So your report stated, Colonel O'Neill."

"My report also stated Daniel was prevented from helping the Abydonians and destroying Anubis by other ascended beings."

"And that his memories were stripped and he was returned to human form as punishment," Sam backed Jack up.

"Not punishment," Daniel objected instinctively.  "Choice.  I believe it was my choice to come back."

"Was it also your choice to give up those memories?" Barrett asked sharply.

"No, no, I'm pretty sure that part was my punishment."

"How very convenient for you," Barnes, or was it Bolt, commented.

"Not convenient at all." Daniel shook his head reprovingly at the man.  Not too bright, that one.  "Anubis is still out there.  _We're_ still out there, fighting him.  If I had the knowledge and the power of the Ancients, don't you think I'd be using them against him?"

"That's a rhetorical question, by the way," Jack pointed out.  "The answer to that one should be entirely self-evident."

"You do have all the reason in the world to want revenge," Barrett acknowledged.  "You were very close to the Abydonian people, weren't you, Dr. Jackson?"

"I like to think I still am."

Barrett smiled a little, conceding the point.

"Well, I don't buy it," Benson stated aggressively.  "You have to look at this from our point of view."

"No, I don't."

"Then let me spell it out for you.  There are only two documented cases of ascended beings taking human form, and in both those cases all the knowledge, as well as considerable power, were retained."

"In Shifu's case, that was because he was still ascended," Daniel explained, patiently, because this man in black wasn't too bright either.  "He chose to appear in human form to help him learn more about his mother."

"And Orlin was punished even more severely than Daniel was for trying to help the people of  Velona," Sam argued.  "At least the Abydonians were ascended with the help of Oma Desala.  The Velonans were wiped out by the other ascended and Orlin was banished there among the ruins, imprisoned alone for hundreds of years."

"The important point is that he retained the memories from his ascension, Major," Benson argued.  "In fact, he was able to construct a Stargate in your basement using little more than your kitchen appliances and eBay."

"Haven't we established the ascended are as pro-punishment as they are anti-interference?" Jack asked sarcastically.  "Is it not obvious that it was as much a part of Orlin's punishment to be forced to remember how he'd screwed up as it is Daniel's to be forced to forget?  Given how highly Daniel values that sort of..."  Jack hesitated, looking for the best description.  "Meaning of life stuff?"

"That's an excellent point, Sir," Sam said in some surprise.

"I know," Jack acknowledged modestly.

"Further discussion would therefore be fruitless," Teal'c announced with finality, calmly drawing proceedings to a close.

"I disagree."  Agent Barrett clearly wasn't a coward.  "I do think it's fairly clear at this point in his recovery Dr. Jackson doesn't have access to his ascended memories.  He's put himself, SG-1 and the lives of the Kelownans he'd already died to save at risk because of it.  But other memories, those from his life before ascension, those _are_ coming back.  Can anyone here guarantee the same won't be true of his time ascended?"

"It's extremely unlikely," Sam responded.  "We already know from our experience with the device that downloaded the Ancient database into Colonel O'Neill's mind the human brain is simply not sufficiently evolved to cope with that amount of information."

Jack took some offence to this.

"The key difference between Daniel and Orlin is that whereas Daniel is human, Orlin was an Ancient," Sam went on.  "He had evolved physiologically to the point where he was able to consciously ascend.  Because he was so advanced, his brain could handle that amount of information.  Daniel's can't.  No one's can!" she said triumphantly.  "No one human, at least."

"We only have your word for it," Benson sneered.

"Good enough," Barrett said quite deliberately to Sam, trying out a sorry-for-interrogating-your-friend type smile.  The man was quite the optimist, an unusual quality in a shady man in black.

"Can we go now?" Jack demanded, getting up.

Barrett shrugged, but put out a quick hand to detain Daniel.  "Dr. Jackson.  If those memories do start to come back?"

"You will be the last to be informed," Teal'c stated somewhat smugly.

 

 

"I didn't think they'd give up so easy," Daniel commented, looking around with interest as Jack turned the truck into a narrow, sloped driveway bordered by a high fence.

"Barrett turned out to be not such a dick after all," Jack said casually, always willing to give credit where it was due.

"I didn't know Colorado Springs was big on log cabins," Daniel said, hopping out of the truck to take a closer look at the dark, sprawling, extremely masculine single-storey timber house with its big windows, neat paths and bright greenery out front.  Even the little he could see of it made him feel this house reflected Jack's livin' large personality.

"Remember it?" Jack asked casually, busy with the beer and groceries while Daniel got his overnight bag and his bearings.

"Can I take a look around?"

"Knock yourself out.  Barbecue?" Jack waved one of the grocery bags temptingly.

"Sure."

"What, no complaints?" Jack said jokingly.  "I thought you said you remembered my cooking."

"I figure if I play along now, I'll get laid later."

"You can to go the bank on that one."

They exchanged lingering, knowing smiles and went into the house.  Daniel dropped his bag by the open door, glanced to Jack for permission, then set about exploring, amazed by all the _space._   "How can you live like this?" he asked Jack, running fingers over the smooth grained surface of the large dining table.  He could see another room behind a waist-high wall, this one filled with comfortable-looking places to sit and many tables, a big enough room for a Vis Uban family to live.  And then there was the kitchen, packed with gadgets and gizmos and food and _stuff_.  Daniel had had a cooking fire and a pot.  It had been enough.  "How can you need all this room, all these things, for just you?" he asked Jack in fascination, finding himself torn between envy and disapproval.

"It's complicated," Jack said, rubbing Daniel's arm affectionately.  "Life, I mean.  Far more complicated out here in the real world than it is inside Cheyenne Mountain.  We may not actually need all these things in order to live, but we've grown very accustomed to having them to help us enjoy life.  Many of them do have a purpose.  They're just more sophisticated tools than you're used to."  

Daniel opened a broad, tall door nearby, finding food and drink stacked haphazardly on shelves.  Coolness filled the air in front of him.

"That's a refrigerator, we call it a fridge," Jack said.  "Imagine how much easier lives would have been on Vis Uban if you could keep your milk, your fruit and vegetables, chilled and fresh for days at a time."

"A lot of work went into harvesting those things," Daniel admitted, closing the door.  "A lot more work went into preserving grains, meats and fruits.  This fridge is a really good idea." 

"See?  It'll all make sense to you in time."

"You have a lot of notes on your fridge," Daniel said, picking at a corner of one of the busy yellow squares.  Jonas Quinn had left some of these in his books.  Post-Its, they were called.

"Mom," Jack sighed, long-suffering, as he put the groceries on the counter.  "Even when she's not here, she finds a way to remind me she's there." His first culinary priority turned out to be chilling the bottles called Heineken.

Daniel left him to it, keen to see the rest of the house and figure out how he fit into it.  Now he knew he and Jack had been lovers before his ascension, he was really hoping to get some new insight into that frustratingly obscured part of his life.  After all, these were meant to be the most familiar of surroundings. 

There were photos everywhere, he found, few of them personal.  Jack was into flying, Daniel knew that about him, the walls and surfaces covered in jets, helicopters and rockets.  There were a few astronomical charts too.  Daniel made a connection.

"You don't have a telescope just to spy on the neighbours!" he shouted out delightedly.

Jack stuck his head out of the kitchen to give a big thumbs up and a friendly, encouraging grin.  "Anything else coming to you?"

"I'm drawn to the fireplace."

"Nothing new there."  Jack's grin widened.  "Although I prefer the bed myself.  The hardwood is hell on the knees, even with the rug."

The bed.

Daniel trotted back down the hall, around the corner and in through the open door of a large bedroom, its pale walls lined with books and pictures of fish, with dark, substantial Shaker-style furniture and a large, substantial bed. 

"Dive in," Jack invited with a broad, gonna-get-ya grin.

Daniel toed off his sneakers and bounced up onto the bed with an audible sigh of relief and ecstasy.

"Oh, that feels _good_ ," he moaned, cushioned in rich quilted comfort.

"Want to get laid now, work up an appetite?"

"Yes, please, Jack."

"That line always did work on you," Jack smirked, strolling over to the bed, already busy with his shirt buttons.

Daniel sat up long enough to pull his T-shirt over his head and unzip his jeans before Jack kindly lent an assist and extracted him from them.  Just watching Jack strip was quite enough to dry Daniel's mouth and harden his sex.

Jack glanced down appreciatively.  "I guess that's foreplay taken care of," he chuckled fondly, consenting to being yanked down on top of Daniel.

"I'm crazy about you," Daniel informed him, kissing him hard.  "And I'm hungry."

Feeling Jack on him like this made his belly jump and his thighs shake even before they began to touch and move against each other.  Daniel was bolder in his explorations, urgent hands everywhere on Jack, searching out the sweet spots that would make him arch and quiver. 

It wasn't enough.  He toppled Jack onto his back, reached for his sex with an eager, pumping hand. 

"You know how to stroke an old man's ego," Jack gasped, giving his all under the pleasurable onslaught.

It was the response Daniel had been working for.  Only, he was still so hungry for Jack and it seemed to him that if he were to use his mouth in place of his hand?

If there was an art to it, he didn't know it and Jack didn't care.  Jack was lost to sensation, drowned in pleasure from the moment Daniel took him into his mouth, surrendering utterly to soft, suckling oblivion.

Jack couldn't move, after.

Daniel put his head on Jack's chest and listened contentedly to the gradual slowing of his slamming heart, Jack's arms around him and his arousal easing to a pleasant, anticipatory ache.  They had time and they had this place to be together.  He'd just made Jack howl and he felt good about it.  He felt good.  Happy to be here and lie quiet with Jack.

"I'm sorry," he said after a long while, watching the sunset stealing over their bodies through the tall windows.  It wasn't that he wanted to spoil the mood, but he'd learned a few things today his friends had been keeping from him.  Jack in particular.  "I didn't know about Baal, about the torture, not until you told me.  I didn't remember."

Jack began to stroke Daniel's hair.  "Quit your worrying," he ordered, his tone kind.  "You did what you could for me.  You kept me sane.  That's a biggie in my book."

"I know you're not angry, we've talked about it enough I have to believe it, but I understand it even less now," Daniel confessed, ashamed of his passivity.  Intellectually, he appreciated his inability to act or effect change as an ascended being was the cause of his return to human form, but emotionally, he was struggling with the fallout.  It felt completely alien and wrong to him to have left the people he cared about most in need.

"Look, Daniel, when I say you did what you could for me, I mean you did _everything_ you could," Jack promised him reassuringly.  "The other ascended wouldn't have let you cross the line into direct action and we both know it.  They'd have stopped you and abandoned me to Baal's ever decreasing circles of hell without any hope of rescue.  No one knew where I was, no one was coming for me.  At least your way, I had a _chance_.  That was all I asked.  And you delivered."

Daniel sighed.  So much for enlightenment and the great path.  He couldn't even reach out for the one he loved.  "All the knowledge of the Ancients, all that power and understanding, and I have to be human again to actually _do_ anything."  How was that for irony?

"And you do it very well," Jack suggested with a thoroughly satisfied wiggle of pleasure.

"I tried to get you to ascend?"

"Ah, you loved me," Jack excused indulgently. 

It was probably no more and no less than the truth.  Daniel had loved him and did love him, had no doubt he'd wanted Jack with him as much then as he wanted to be with him now.  He felt the truth of it and was grateful for Jack's ready understanding, however little he might deserve it.

"I'd have to love you to put up with you," he teased, wanting to get them back to that light, glad, together place.  "The service in this house is terrible.  I haven't been fed, I haven't been taken care of."  He bumped his hips meaningfully against Jack.

"Thought you'd lost interest there."

Daniel bumped him again, slightly more emphatically.  "A little less conversation, a little more action please."

Jack took care of him.  Good, good care.  Great.  Absolutely, unquestionably, the very _best_ of care. 

The host with the most, he also took care of dinner, firing up the barbecue while Daniel blissed through an extended steaming shower, wallowing in the luxury of it all. 

They rendezvoused out on the deck, wolfing down substantial flame-grilled sirloins, pasta salad and warm buttered bread.  When they'd finished eating [in Daniel's case finished eating every single thing], they poured more wine, then moved over to sit close together on the bench facing out into the yard, stretching out their legs to rest on the deck's rough-hewn balcony.

The air was cool and fresh, the deck and yard soaking up the last glinting rays of the day's sun.  Feeling Jack's heat comfortingly all along his side, Daniel sighed with pleasure, relaxing into him.  Jack brushed his cheek tenderly, then slid an arm around him.  Daniel succumbed to temptation with little in the way of resistance, settling back with his head resting on Jack's shoulder to enjoy this time of uncomplicated security.

"How long can I stay?" he asked, hopeful. 

"I wish I could say forever, but, in case you didn't catch this in the general memory melee, we're not exactly out and proud," Jack said wryly.

"If I get my own place?  Would that help you?"

"It'll be simpler for us, Daniel, if your movements aren't being tracked so closely as they are while you're living on base.  Nights at your place, nights at mine."

Not perfect, not the ideal, but...  "Sounds good."

"We have to be careful.  I'd love to have you live here with me, but it's impossible as long as I'm with the Air Force.  It is what I want.  I always hoped when I retired?" he hinted.

"Count on it," Daniel promised.

Jack dropped a light, not-in-any-way-sappy-and-happy kiss into Daniel's hair.  "We've bought some time to be together," he said reassuringly.  "Weeks maybe, with Hammond's agreement to let you move off base in easy stages."

"I'm sorry it has to be this way for us, but I guess I understand the necessity if we want to be together.  I do remember there are rules we both have to follow.  The Stargate programme is just as important to you as it is to me."

"It's where I can do the most good. I have influence with Hammond, and Hammond has influence with the President and Joint Chiefs.  Sometimes, it makes the difference."

Jack would not have talked like this with anyone else.  Recognition of this simple truth made Daniel happy.

"Has it always been this complicated for us?" he asked.

"Complicated is throwing my ever-loving mother into the mix," Jack said pithily.  "She loathes the Uniform Code of Military Justice with deep, abiding passion.  She even joined some damn lobby group to fight for gay rights in the military.  I swear, if I ever get outed, she'll be at the bottom of it somehow."

"I'd like to see her again."

"Why?"

"Jack!"

"Don't let her sucker you in, Daniel," Jack urged.  "As bad as Baal may seem, believe me, my mother is worse.  At least he was going to let me die after he wrung me dry.  Mom just keeps coming back for more.  And more.  And more.  She's damnably persistent."

"And the fact you dote on her is what?  A pitiful act of duplicitous self-preservation?"

"Those memories are really starting to come through for you!"

"Dinner.  We should have dinner with the family tomorrow night."

Jack pouted and whined, but Daniel applied a persuasive hand to his thigh, eventually convincing him to take pity on the dear old interfering busybodies. 

"I'll call later and invite them.  Much later," Jack warned.  "When I can be sure of getting the machine instead of my Mom."

"Definitely call later," Daniel agreed, continuing to take an interest in Jack's thigh.  "Much, _much_ later.  Right now, you should be focused on getting _me_."

 

* * *

 

 

It started when Jack got up to pee.

In the cold dark before dawn, the floor was closer than he remembered, his sweat pants were longer than he remembered, his T-shirt was baggier than he remembered, and everything else was smaller than he remembered. 

Freaky.

Not entirely convinced he was awake, he left Daniel sleeping, hauled his pants back up where they belonged and padded into the bathroom to check himself out.

When he saw his face in the mirror, he let out a holler of sheer stunned outrage that would have woken the dead, let alone the archaeologist.  Daniel tore into the bathroom, wild-eyed and ready for anything.  At least, he thought he was, until he set eyes on Jack. 

"What the hell? Who are you?" Daniel demanded, instinctively pulling up his pyjamas from sexy hip-height and covering his bare chest in case the strange kid who'd turned up in his lover's bathroom took him for a pervert or something.

"It's me! _Jack_!  Look at me!" Jack wailed.  "They shrank me!"

"Who?  What?"  Daniel was getting more bewildered by the second.  "And who _are_ you?"

"Somebody!  I don't know!  And I'm _me_!"

"Shrank you?" Daniel queried cautiously, backing up a few steps.  "Jack?" he queried even more cautiously, looking searchingly at Jack's zitty little face.  "Are you...you?"

"Of course I'm me!"

"You don't look like you."

"I'm mini-me!"  Jack spun to glare at his zit-encrusted reflection.  "I haven't looked this way since I was fifteen!"

"There is a physical resemblance," Daniel admitted.  He'd seen photos just a few days before.

"Of course there is!" Jack jumped at him, furious.  "Because I'm me!  And you should _know_ that, Daniel.  You were just in bed with me!  Do I need to get into detail?"

Daniel blanched and sank down precariously onto the edge of the bathtub, taking a few deep, not particularly calming breaths.  "It's not the strangest thing that's ever happened to you," he muttered, trying to convince himself.  "There was the time you got really old, the time you became a caveman, the time we all swapped bodies."

"Daniel!"

"I, er, I think I need to get you to the SGC."

"Now we're talking!  Call Carter and Fraiser," Jack ordered.  "They need to run some tests, find a cure and make me big again."

Daniel was in full agreement but wasn't up for locomotion.  "Sorry," he apologised weakly.  "I'm finding this a little hard to take in."

" _You're_ finding it hard?" Jack gasped.  "I'm the one who's a kid again!"

"And I'm the one who was just in bed with you!" 

Jack hadn't thought of that.  God damn!  "I'm me, you know.  Jack," he promised, going over to Daniel, who shuddered a bit when he tried to touch him.  "Lovable old me," he snapped.  "Still got all my memories and experiences.  I'm still me on the inside."

"I know," Daniel said, trying to summon up a smile.  "It's the outside I've got a problem with."

"You and me both," Jack sighed, sinking down next to Daniel on the edge of the bath tub.  "Appearances aren't supposed to count."

"No, no they're not."  Daniel looked around at Jack with wry sympathy.  "You're still cut off, bud."

"Call Carter.  Fraiser.  Now!" Jack snapped, seeing his sex life flash before his eyes.  "They need to make me big again!"

Daniel made the calls, made the bed, disposed of all incriminating evidence of his presence in the bedroom, bolted when Jack came in to dress, didn't laugh when he saw Jack dressed and hiking up what he was dressed in, refused to let Jack drive his own truck, remembered he didn't remember how to drive, let Jack drive the truck and proved his love by steamrolling through checkpoints and over assorted security types keen to cuff Jack for his own protection. 

Not that Jack couldn't have taken care of them on his own, which he was at pains to point out to Daniel [and their security detail] on the way down to the Infirmary.  Here, Daniel proved he was a pain in the ass by making Jack make nice with the medical types trying to take his pulse, his temperature, his clothes and his blood.

"Where's Fraiser?" Jack kept demanding.

"Dr. Fraiser will be here shortly," General Hammond announced in response as he walked into the Infirmary.  "Dr. Jackson?" he asked, while looking Jack up and down in disbelief.

"And this is Jack O'Neill," Daniel said staunchly, jerking his head in Jack's direction.

"But he can't be more than fifteen years old," Hammond said, openly struggling with his senior officer coming up short.  "Are you saying Colonel O'Neill has, somehow, regressed more than thirty years overnight?"

"Someone shrank me," Jack complained bitterly.

"That remains to be seen," Dr. Fraiser said briskly, emerging from behind the general with Carter and Teal'c hard on her heels.  They all did a double-take when they laid eyes on Jack, even the big guy. 

Recovering fastest, Fraiser snapped on gloves and bore down on him, brandishing a needle.  Of course, she'd been the one to deal with Jack when he got really old, when he became a caveman, when they all swapped bodies.  Nothing threw her off-stride, not any more.

"Is this really Colonel O'Neill?" Carter asked Daniel, somewhere between fascinated and appalled.

"You can talk to me, y'know, Carter.  I'm right here in the room."

"Daniel?"

"He's Jack.  I'm sure Dr. Fraiser's tests will confirm it."

"How is this possible?" Teal'c asked, looming at Jack like he was a pint-sized weapon of mass destruction.  Which, admittedly, tended to be their experience with kids.

"Hello?" Jack waved at the room, frankly annoyed at his seeming invisibility, let alone inaudibility to everyone but Daniel, who, dearly as Jack loved him, was a flake who'd talk to dogs.  "Someone shrank me."

"Why?" Carter asked reasonably.

"I don't know!"

"Dr. Jackson?" Hammond queried.

"He doesn't know either!"

"Presuming for the moment that he is Colonel O'Neill," Carter said thoughtfully.  "Why is he the only one affected?  Didn't you stay at the colonel's house last night, Daniel?"

"We're assuming I'm not affected," Daniel said.  "Maybe you should check that I'm me while you're confirming Jack is Jack."

Fraiser was happy to share the pain.

"How long?" Hammond asked, indicating the vials of blood.

"Several hours at least, General.  I'll run the labs myself."

"Call me as soon as you're done, Doctor," Hammond instructed, then turned to Jack, concern tinged with amusement.  "In the meantime, we'll try to make you as comfortable as possible."

"Peachy," Jack mumbled as the general left, apparently for more pressing matters, although he couldn't imagine what they were. 

It sucked being small.  It got no respect.  Not like the time he'd been old, or the time he'd been a caveman, or even the time they'd all swapped bodies. 

And that was before he noticed the grins on Carter's and Teal'c's faces.

"You know, I think you two are enjoying this just a little too much."

"Well, you are kinda cute," Carter said, making Fraiser snort as she went off with the blood samples.

"That's 'Sir' to you!" Jack retorted, not in the mood.

Carter lost the grin.

"And being trapped inside this scrawny little body isn't my idea of cute, Carter."

Sadly, it wasn't Daniel's idea of cute either.

"Does possessing a younger body not have certain advantages, O'Neill?" Teal'c asked.

What, like celibacy, invisibility, inaudibility and a complete lack of respect?

"No.  Not seeing it."

"Do you not experience increased health and vitality?"

"My _vitality_ was just fine, thank you," Jack snarled.

Mute reminder of just how fine, and how frequently, Daniel momentarily looked like he'd been stuffed.

"I think what Teal'c is saying is valid," Carter argued predictably.  "How many of us wouldn't trade everything for the chance to be young again? Live our lives over?"

If Daniel had been young too, then maybe.  Maybe.  But Daniel wasn't, and as long as he wasn't but Jack was, Jack was cut off.  And he'd only just got him again!

  
"Yeah, well, I don't plan on staying like this."

  
"Well, in the meantime, may I make a suggestion? Try enjoying this as much as we are."

Jack glared at Carter.

"Sir."

"Shouldn't you be someplace working on a cure for this?"

"It's okay," Daniel said.  "I know you're busy, Sam.  I'll, er, I'll take care of Jack."

"We'll know more when we have the labs back."  Carter shot Daniel an amused, sympathetic look, then she sauntered off too.  Teal'c just stuck his nose in the air and walked away.

"It sucks being small," Jack sighed.

"Want to come along to my lab or someplace?" Daniel offered, nice enough to try to hide his discomfort, sufficient evidence in itself how badly Jack was screwed.

They were dogged by the security detail, who took up position at the entrance to the lab.  Jack probably couldn't have taken either of the guards, not even the girl, but he appreciated the implied compliment.

Daniel sat on a stool at his lab bench, rustling up a smile when Jack sat on the one next to him.

"How you doing?" he asked Jack, keeping his voice low so they couldn't be overheard by the guards.  They had a little privacy: the cameras only recorded visuals, not sound.

"Apart from being small, which sucks rocks?"  Jack shrugged.  "Lousy.  I think God hates me."

"Well, then, I guess he hates me too."

The two of them were a giant cosmic joke.  Something like this, it _had_ to happen just when they were both starting to make some sense of their lives.  It was just their luck.  Jack nudged Daniel's shoulder gently.  They were in this together.

"Sorry, Jack.  I know I should be doing better with this."

"What?  Somebody write a playbook on how to react when your boyfriend gets shrunk while I wasn't looking?"

"I'm more concerned how to react if my boyfriend can't be un-shrunk."

"Thank you, Mister Positive."

"Don't tell me that hasn't occurred to you."

"I can't get you back and then lose you again," Jack whispered ferociously, painfully aware of the guards.

"I feel the same," Daniel whispered back.  "But this might not be in our power to fix and, as much as I love you, I can't have sex with a kid.  I just, I can't."

"I'm not a kid, Daniel.  I'm me, the man you know.  I'm _Jack_."

"Only on the inside."

"Worst case scenario, they can't fix this, I'll grow out of it anyway.  Just stick it out with me," Jack pleaded.

"You know I will," Daniel chided.

"Two, three years, tops."  Practically a life sentence, the way he was feeling now.  Oy.

"More like five or six.  At least."

"Daniel!"

"At least."

"You got any idea how many hormones I have sloshing through my system right now?" Jack groaned piteously.  "Where do you think the zits come from?  Just sitting in the same room with you has my motor running!  Two or three _days_ will likely kill me."

"Well, I prefer the vintage O'Neill and for now, my motor's stalled."

"Vintage?"

"You know, whatever you may look like, you still sound like you.  The loud, grating parts."

"You don't think I'm cute?  Carter thinks I'm cute."

"Then go hang out with Carter."

"Traitor."

"One of us has to be the grown-up here."

Jack nudged Daniel again, not gently this time, dislodging a distinctly mischievous grin.

"You're enjoying this as much as they are!" he accused him indignantly.

"God hates us, Jack, and I don't know what else to do."

 

* * *

 

 

Summoned to the briefing room, they found Carter, Teal'c, General Hammond and Dr. Fraiser waiting.

"Take a seat, Dr. Jackson, Colonel O'Neill," Hammond invited.  "This _is_ Colonel O'Neill?" he asked of Fraiser.  "You're certain, Doctor?"

Fraiser checked something in the medical report she had in front of her.  "Initial tests show that within an acceptable margin of error, this boy's DNA is virtually identical to Colonel O'Neill's."

"What size margin of error are we talking about?" Carter asked.

"Very small," Fraiser replied.  "In a court of law, the DNA sample we took from the boy would be considered a high-probability match to the DNA we have on file from Colonel O'Neill."

This would be because the boy _was_ Colonel O'Neill!

"There is a...tiny....abnormality," Fraiser said, hesitating over it.  "But for all intents and purposes, it's him."

Hallelujah!

"Tiny abnormality?" Daniel repeated, disbelieving.  "Like the fact he's suddenly quite a few years younger than he's supposed to be?"

"To be honest, this is out of my league," Fraiser 'fessed up like a man.  "We've got some genetic specialists flying in.  We're going to run more tests, see what we can learn."

Aww, crap! Jack groaned inwardly.  That didn't sound to him like a cure was in the building, let alone on the table.

"What about Daniel?" Carter asked.

"Daniel's DNA is a perfect match to the sample we have on file for him."

"Well, that's some good news," Carter said, relieved.

"What are we supposed to do while we're waiting for these specialists to fly in?" Daniel asked, about as deflated as Jack.

"I'd suggest taking a look around Colonel O'Neill's house," Fraiser said.  "We should rule out environmental factors."

"I ask you," Jack said sarcastically, pointing to his scrawny self.  "What could possibly be in my environment that could cause _this_?"

"Perhaps some concealed alien technology?" Teal'c said.  Typical glass half-full stuff from the big guy.  He was _always_ blaming aliens for the tough stuff.

"There has to be something," Carter conceded.  "Or you wouldn't be like this."

She was still having trouble with that whole Sir thing.

"It is the last place you were...you," Daniel said pacifically.

"Home it is," Jack consented ungraciously, far less interested in the cause than the cure.

The drive back was extremely uncomfortable.  Still not entirely convinced Junior Jack wasn't a weapon of mass destruction, Teal'c outmanoeuvred Daniel in order to fill the back seat of the motor pool SUV with watchful menace.  Jack refused to be intimidated, or at least to appear intimidated, but was slightly taken aback at just how large Teal'c really was.  He made him feel like a bug on a windshield.

Carter had brought along her favourite doodad to scan for possible concealed alien shrinking technology, confidently taking point as they went into the house.

It was only then Jack realised something was horribly, terribly wrong.  The door wasn't meant to be open.

"Is that you, love?  Or just burglars?" a cheerful voice sang out from the kitchen.

"Mom!" Jack yelped, bolting.  He bounced off the wall that was Teal'c into the actual wall and found his mother right in front of him, cucumber in hand, presumably to repel burglars.  Or undutiful sons.

Everyone froze.

Kate gaped at Jack, closed her eyes, shook her head, opened her eyes again, gaped some more.  It wasn't to be hoped she wouldn't recognise him.  She was, after all, a Mother. 

Plus, he had kind of given the game away, yelling out Mom like that.

"Jack?" she said uncertainly, searching his face.  "Jack!  _What the hell_?"

"I'm sorry, Mrs. O'Neill," Carter jumped in, first to recover from the shock.  "I'm afraid I need to ask you to leave now.  This is a matter of national security."

"This is my _son_ ," Kate snapped, not budging.

"This is not your son."  Teal'c issued this straightforward denial with superb confidence.  "It is in fact the unfortunate by-product of a failed genetic experiment."

"A genetic experiment?" Kate's eyebrows soared.  "With zits?" she asked scornfully.

"He's a clone," Carter said, rolling with it.

"Are you people on drugs?" Kate said incredulously.  "You think I don't know anything about cloning?"

"Actually, no," Carter said, blinking.

"It doesn't work this way," Kate snapped.  "They don't spring forth, perfectly teenaged.  You never look at the website for Dolly the sheep?"

No one had.

Kate curled her lip.  "Even clones have to mature in the same regular, boring old way as the rest of us," she informed them bitingly.  "And even if they didn't, even if you had found some bizarre new way to circumvent the maturation process to make a strict genetic copy of Jack, it would be Jack's age.  It would _not_ be fifteen and zitty."  Kate was brandishing her cucumber dangerously.  "I don't know what you people did to him, but this is my son."

"You've got to admire her style," Jack declared with some pride.

"Well, I don't admire yours," Kate informed Carter roundly, moving protectively in front of Jack.  "It's not enough we're expected to swallow Daniel's miraculous return from the dead without question, now you expect to get away with putting my Jack back in high school?"

"We explained what happened in Daniel's case," Carter started to say, floundering in the face of Kate's vehemence.

"I don't blame you, darling," Kate promised Daniel, breaking off hostilities for a quick second.  "We're just glad to have you back where you belong, with the family." 

"Amen," said Jack, enough of a masochist to starting to enjoy this a tad.

"But having our boy back doesn't mean we bought that ridiculous cover story you people came up with for _one second_ ," Kate snapped, back on the offensive.

"I told you it was lame," Jack told Carter smugly.

"They're all lame," Kate said derisively.  "Deep space telemetry, my eye!  This is an Air Force town.  There are hundreds of Air Force personnel here, hundreds of families.  Four hundred and fifty families housed at Peterson alone.  You think we families don't communicate, that we don't socialise, don't support each other when we're worried or hurting?  That we don't notice or question when our loved ones leave for the day and don't come back for weeks or months, or come back injured or wounded, or don't come back at all?  You think we don't notice the deaths, the funerals, the kids taken out of school, the relocations?  You're based at NORAD, for God's sake, not a war zone.  The facility that tracks Santa Claus for the kids at Christmas!" she said scathingly.  "People are dying under Cheyenne Mountain, people are coming back from the dead, people are being downsized."

"Good one!" Jack beamed.

"All in the middle of Colorado Springs?  And, as tight-knit as you all are, it doesn't occur to you the same holds true for your families?  I found the others, I went to them the first time my Jack got hurt when he shouldn't have.  Each time he got hurt after that.  When he was gone for weeks and no one..."  Kate's voice broke on a sob she heroically fought back.  "No one would admit to me my son was lost, that both my boys were gone."

"Kate," Carter protested.

"Whatever secret you're trying to keep under that mountain, there's a real human cost," Kate raged.  "I'm not just talking about the lives of the men lost, but the lives of their families, their wives and children.  People like me, and Joe, and Ruth.  More and more of them bereaved, the scale of those casualties getting harder and harder to hide in the middle of a city, a military community.  It's only a matter of time before one of those wives snaps, doesn't buy the story or won't buy the deal the Air Force tries to sell her, and goes public.  Or some enterprising journalist takes a long hard look at the obituaries.  There's a trail of bodies and paper no one can hide."

No one knew what to say to her, least of all Jack.  He jumped a mile when she suddenly swung around to hug him fiercely to her. 

"I love my son, and I trust him," Kate said, giving in to tears.  "Daniel is family, and you two are friends of my family.  Don't misunderstand me.  I'm nobody's fool, and I know all of you well enough to understand whatever this secret of yours is, you believe it's worth keeping.  I need you to understand while I won't be the one to tear all this down, inevitably someone will."

"The secret's worth keeping, Mom.  It really is," Jack promised, getting a snuffling maternal kiss for his pains.  His mom wasn't that much shorter than he was.  Made it much harder to fend her off.

"Then do a better job," Kate said sharply.  "Daniel hasn't even recovered from his miraculous resurrection and now, look at you."

"It goes without saying everyone will be doing everything in their power, Carter, to make me big again," Jack said pointedly, looking a big boy for his Mom.

Kate patted his cheek lovingly.  "When did I surrender my son to science fiction?" she sighed.

"Speaking of which," Jack said.  "Mom, can you take off for a while?  We really need to take a look around."

"You think whatever happened to you, happened here?" Worried sick for her Jack she might be, Kate was still every bit as inquisitive as her darling Daniel.  "Maybe you were kidnapped by aliens," she joked.

Jack blinked, disoriented, suddenly seeing green globes of light spinning in a white mist and the face of an Asgard looking down at him.

"Mom, you _really_ need to go," he said urgently, quite shocked to find he couldn't budge her physically when she stood her ground.

"You weren't kidnapped by aliens, Jack," Kate sighed, maternally long-suffering.  "It doesn't make sense.  In fact, it makes a lot less sense than any of that other crap you people have come out with lately.  Be reasonable, son.  With Daniel in the house, why'd they take you?"

 

* * *

 

 

"You seem more concerned about my mother than about the Asgard paying me a visit last night," Jack accused General Hammond.

"Having met your mother on a number of occasions, I consider her to be the more immediate threat."

Jack had to give him that.

"Is there any danger of Kate taking this public?" Hammond asked.

"No," Daniel said before Jack could.  "Kate loves Jack and she wouldn't do anything to hurt him.  She's only concerned with how we're going to help him."

"Kate promised to keep it to herself, at least for now," Carter seconded.  "She won't even tell Joe unless she's forced to."

"That's a relief," Hammond said.

"Indeed.  Mrs. O'Neill is a formidable opponent."

"Indeed," Jack, so often the losing side in Kate's varied conflicts, parroted.

"Kate made some valid points about the inevitability of contact and communication between the families of base personnel and about the weakness of some of our cover stories," Daniel said.  "And she's right about the paper trail of casualties. Eventually, our losses will be so great, we won't be able to disguise them, not from the press, not from the public."

"While I'm duly concerned about the potentially sensitive information that's apparently being shared by SGC families and dependents, and our reliance on their continuing support and discretion, for now, I don't see we have any option than to go on as we are," Hammond said.  "Not under the present administration."

"With elections looming, maybe it's time we gave some serious consideration to the potential global impact of the Stargate programme going public," Daniel suggested.  "Societal, political, economic, even spiritual."

"You're not suggesting we go public?" Carter said.

"It's not up to me to make that determination.  I'd just like to have a clearer idea of the fallout we'd be facing if it ever came down to it."

"Sounds like an eminently reasonable suggestion to me," Hammond said.  "Perhaps you and Major Carter could compile a report, touching on some of the points raised by Mrs. O'Neill?"

"Can we focus on the problem at hand?" Jack objected.  "Specifically, making me big!"

"Kate's scepticism aside," said Daniel.  "Jack's account does sound like a number of UFO abduction case files I've read."

"This you remember?" Jack said, truly aggravated.  "My birthday you forget."

"Looks like you'll have a lot more," Daniel noted, quite aware of Jack's increasingly foul mood, even if he wasn't the primary target for it.

"This encounter is incongruous with all previous encounters we have had with the Asgard," Teal'c said.

"Thor has indicated that the Asgard have been keeping an eye on human development in the past," Carter reminded them.

"But we're allies now," Hammond argued.  "We've cooperated with them on a number of missions."

"This."  Jack indicated himself.  "I would not have agreed to."

"What could they possibly hope to gain from secretly making you younger against your will?" Carter wondered.

"I got nothing."

"Whatever the reasoning behind this, the fact the Asgard are involved gives me hope," Daniel confided.  "If they had the technology to do this to Jack in the first place, then there's every reason to believe they can undo it."

"You think we should contact them?" Carter asked.

"Yes," Daniel said simply.  "This is so unlike what we know of their history, their interactions with humans and what we've personally experienced of them, I can't believe it was done with hostile intent."

"Nor can I," Carter said.

"My own intent is fairly hostile," Jack divulged.  "I've saved their skinny little grey butts a few times now, and in return, they shrink mine?"

"They're still your best hope for recovery, Jack."

"Send the message," Hammond ordered.

"I'll do it myself," Carter offered.

"General, uh, I'd like to cross-reference some of those old abduction accounts, see if I can find any connection," Daniel requested.  "I'm not prepared to sit around waiting for the Asgard to drop by and fix this.  Jack needs help now."

Bless.

"Please do," Hammond consented.

"Since I'm the one who was actually abducted, I guess I should lend a hand," Jack said.

"As will I."

"I'm not going to blow up in Daniel's face, Teal'c," Jack grouched.  "He's convinced I'm some kind of juvenile alien killing machine," he told the rest of them.

"Maybe he's just convinced you're...you," Daniel countered, just a leetle sarcastic.

Jack pouted at him reproachfully, but he was immune to the cuteness.

The three amigos withdrew to Daniel's lab, Teal'c commandeering the laptop while Daniel futzed at the shelves. Jack watched over Teal'c's shoulder, mildly impressed.  For someone who hadn't even seen a computer before joining the SGC, Teal'c worked the keyboard like a pro.  He was a much faster typist than, say, Jack.

"It would appear that a great many of the Tau'ri have encountered beings from other worlds," Teal'c announced, surveying a ream of database entries scrolling off the screen.

"Little do they know how close they are to the truth," Daniel said.

"What, exactly, are we looking for, Daniel Jackson?"

"Well, any abduction accounts that match Jack's story, and, um, obviously, anyone claiming to have physically regressed several decades overnight. We just need to enter our search parameters into the database."

"It has already been done."

Smartass.

Daniel came over to take a look at the screen too.  "Wow.  That's a lot of people."

"Indeed."

"Let's see if any of these match Jack's story exactly.  Jack?"

"Four green lights, white mist, Asgard face," Jack supplied.

Teal'c entered fresh parameters into the database, generating a new list of results.

"That's a little more reasonable," Daniel commented, scanning the results even faster than Teal'c had entered the search.  He was also a smartass, but he was hot and he put out, so Jack let him away with it.  "That's interesting.  Of the narrowed down accounts, the most recent is from..."

"Nineteen years ago," Teal'c interjected, possibly also feeling Daniel was a smartass, stealing his thunder after he'd put in the work.

"Eight are here in the States," Daniel said.  "I wonder if these addresses are still valid?"

"Why?" Jack asked.

"Maybe we should go talk to these people in person?"

"What do you hope to learn?" Teal'c asked before Jack could ask 'why' again.

"Hammond isn't going to let me off-base," Jack objected.  "You can't just leave me here."

They both raised their eyebrows at him.

"I might explode," Jack said darkly.

 

* * *

 

 

The next several days were interminable. 

The only hope Jack had of a cure were the same Asgard who'd done this to him in the first place, Daniel was away investigating, Teal'c was looking after Daniel while he investigated, Jack had another zit and the whole base laughing at him [and not even behind his back], Daniel was away.

His mood was hateful.

When he wasn't going through the battery of medical tests being run on him by Fraiser's team of specialist geneticists, he retreated to his quarters, hammered hell out of his Playstation.  Texted his Mom a few times that he was okay, he loved her and Dad, they were working on the problem and he'd be home soon.  Daniel managed to sneak in a few quick calls, telling Jack much the same things before he was retrieved by the over-protective Jaffa.  Even Carter steered clear, finding Jack a lot less cute than she had done.

Jack was anything but cute. 

The more time he spent this way, the less he felt like himself.  He wasn't a young man, he wasn't a soft man, and he'd grown accustomed to the needs and rhythms, the flaws and pains of his body.  Everything, it all just _felt_ wrong.  He couldn't get to sleep because his body didn't feel like it was supposed to and it made him think about it all the time.  He couldn't get coffee, he couldn't even pee without freaking.

Worse, a kid again, his strength failed him.  It was more than just physical, having to look up at people he used to look down on.  Or rather, he'd failed to factor in the physical when it came to the respect he usually commanded.  Grown accustomed to.  Now he wasn't taken seriously, and it wasn't only because he looked young.  It was because he was weak.  This horrible awareness of his vulnerability gnawed on him.

He hoped to God the Asgard did come and fix this soon.  The longer it went on, the more he thought it would change him.  He couldn't stay like this.  It was unimaginable.  Whatever Hammond said about the valuable contributions he could continue to make at the SGC, Jack was a joke.  He'd never be allowed off-world, never be on SG-1, never be listened to.  His career was over. 

He couldn't _think_ of giving up Daniel, being without him again.  Shuddered away from all thought of family with a jolt of fear and dread.  He couldn't lose.  Not like this.

"Hey," Daniel said, right there with him, right out of the blue. 

"Hey yourself!" Jack jumped up, grinning.  Until he saw the look on Daniel's grey, pinched face.  "What?  What is it?"

"Janet's just finished going over the genetic team's analysis of your test results."

"How bad can it be?"

Daniel put his arms around Jack, hugging him in close.

"You're dying."

He thought Daniel might be crying, but for the life of him, he couldn't do anything for him.  His face was buried against Daniel's chest and he clung to him, let himself be comforted like the kid he looked.  The kid that was killing him.

"You know, one time when you were ascended, you said to me that we always seemed to be saying goodbye."

Daniel jerked as if from a blow, his arms tightening convulsively around Jack.

"Not this time, Dannyboy," Jack promised extravagantly, because he couldn't bear it.  "Not this time."

"Whatever it takes," Daniel choked, hurting.  He held Jack for a long while, until they both steadied, then he went out with him to face it.

A grave-faced Fraiser and Carter were waiting for them in the Infirmary.

"I hear the zits aren't my biggest problem," Jack offered by way of greeting, glad of having Daniel at his back.

"Something is happening to your body at the cellular level, Colonel," Fraiser said.  "Basically, your genetic structure is growing more unstable."

"You probably aren't feeling the effects yet," Carter added.

"Honestly, Doc, I feel fine."

Fraiser went on as if he hadn't spoken.  "You'll start to notice symptoms as the condition worsens."

"How long do I have?"

"It's hard to say," Fraiser dodged, not meeting his eyes.

"Say it anyway."

"Weeks, days.  I don't know."  She hated giving him this news, hated her own helplessness.  "You'll notice fatigue first.  In the end, your body's organs will completely shut down."

"It's like something inside you is causing a total system failure," Carter said sadly.

"Still no word from the Asgard?" Daniel asked.

"I gated through to Katana myself, Daniel," Carter replied.

"There has to be something!" Daniel fired up, his distress evident.  "I didn't come all this way just to watch Jack die like this!"

Carter eyed Jack uneasily.  "The Tok'ra?" she offered hesitantly.

"No!"  Jack threw up a hand.  "No way, Carter.  No way in hell they're _ever_ sticking another snake in my head."

"Whatever it takes, Jack," Daniel said very quietly.

Jack sucked in a few angry, shaken breaths, then nodded tersely to Carter.

"I'll try to reach my Dad, get him here ASAP," she promised.  "We just need you to hang in there, Colonel."

Jack was too mad to do anything but storm away.  He was aware of Daniel following, but had to work off some steam, pounded through the hallways until he reached the work-out room he and Teal'c always sparred in.  He attacked the punch bag with everything he had; fists, feet, body.  "Sonovabitch!" he grated, exhausted too quickly.  He slumped, just holding onto it, vaguely aware of Daniel watching close by.

"You'll tell Mom and Dad?" he asked of Daniel.  "If it, if it comes down to it."

"It won't.  It can't."

"They won't understand, but it'll be that much easier for them coming from you."

"I don't understand!"

"Especially Mom.  She's seen me, and she thinks this place is to blame."  He smiled, graveyard humour.  "God help Stargate Command then."

"Jack..."

"They love you, you know.  You won't be alone."

Daniel shook his head mutely, helplessly.

"I've been through it."  Jack came over to Daniel, finding a smile for him.  "I had to live when you died.  I...made it through.  You've been through it too, Daniel. You survived losing your wife, you'll survive losing me.  You're a tough kid.  It's one of the reasons I fell in love with you."

"I'm not going to 'make it,' Jack," Daniel denied angrily.  "I'm not letting go of you, period.  I told you, I didn't come all this way just to watch you die."

"It's not up to either of us at this point."

"It's up to you to fight, to hold on until we've exhausted every option."

"Even getting snaked?  You think that one through, Daniel?  Waiting those five or six years you were talking about before we can be together, and then...what?"

Daniel stayed stubbornly silent.

"You hate those things as much as I do, and suddenly, it's okay if we're in a love triangle with one?" Jack pressed.  "You really okay with that?"

"Yes!  No!"  Daniel looked as if he would explode.  "I don't know!"

"You still think the Asgard will come through?"

"I still _hope_."

"And...stranger things have happened."

Daniel sagged, torn between anger and relief at Jack's flippancy.

"You'll talk to my Mom?" Jack coaxed.  "You'll help the folks with this?"

Daniel could refuse him nothing.  "If it comes to it."

 

* * *

 

 

The latest twist in the tale of Junior Jack came with the arrival of Jacob Carter and his better half Selmak.  Carter brought her old man up to the briefing room where Jack was corralled with Daniel, Teal'c and General Hammond.

Like everyone else who'd laid eyes on Jack, Jacob had to stop and take a moment.  A long one.  "I'm sorry," he apologised.  "Sam told me what was going on, but what could anyone possibly hope to gain from this?"

"Can we just get on with it?" Jack said, snappy and skittish waiting for the hammer to fall.  "I'm not getting any younger."

"Well, as I told Sam, our options are pretty limited."

"You came all this way just to say goodbye?" Jack said sarcastically.

"At this point, I'm here to recommend we put you in stasis until we better understand your condition."

"You want to freeze me?"  This was about as promising as the snaking so far as Jack was concerned.

"Colonel, we're not talking about cryogenics as we know it on Earth," Carter pointed out.  "The risk is minimal."

"Yeah, well, I've been down this road with Tok'ra before.  No offence, Jacob, but the last time you guys helped me out of a jam, I ended up rescuing an old girlfriend I'd never met before."

"We would never subject you to another blending without your express permission."

"Good, because it's never gonna happen."

Daniel was standing close behind him, so Jack couldn't see his reaction, but he heard a sharp intake of breath.  He was sorry for it, but couldn't see how living as someone other than himself was all that much better than being dead.  He wasn't coping with being Junior Jack, couldn't conceive what it would be like to time-share.  Maybe if it hadn't gone so badly the last time?  Whatever the Tok'ra claimed about the rights of the host, Jack knew first-hand that blending wasn't a real partnership.  The snake always had the upper hand, could take out the host whenever it wanted.

Jack couldn't live with that.

He knew Daniel would forgive him; it was the self-same reason he'd prevented Jacob from healing him back into a half-life.

"No pressure, Jack, but you need to make a decision," Jacob said.  "We have a team standing by, but if you wait too long, we won't be able to reverse the cellular breakdown."

"Colonel, please," Carter begged, sincerely sorry for him, caring enough to push.

"Can I take five to think it over?"

"Take ten," Hammond said compassionately.

"Wait a minute!" Daniel objected, stepping forward.  "Aren't we rushing this?" he demanded.  "You just got here, Jacob.  You haven't even seen the DNA data collected by the genetics team that tested Jack.  And not only Jack.  Teal'c and I got samples from each of the individuals who were abducted in the same manner he was.  There could be something in those samples, something that could help Jack."

"Good to see you too, Daniel," Jacob said dryly.  "How's the de-ascended thing working out for you?"

"Sorry.  Hi.  Okay," Daniel recited rapidly, giving Jacob the briefest, disinterested wave of a hand.

Naturally, Jacob engulfed him in a manly hug from which he emerged ruffled and slightly indignant.

"About Jack," he insisted.

"Relax, Daniel," Jacob said soothingly.  "Selmak wants to take a look at those lab results anyway."

"Good," Daniel nodded.  "Now."

"He doesn't change," Jacob sighed to the room at large.

"He's a good friend," Carter said softly, smiling.

"Dr. Fraiser will be glad of Selmak's help on this, Jacob," Hammond capitulated gracefully.  "Given the time constraints, maybe we should go straight to the Infirmary."

The general's wish was everyone else's command, so off they trooped to the medical bay.  Jack was sick of the sight of it, but at least it gave him a chance to have a quick talk with Daniel while Jacob, Fraiser and the others were looking at the computer.

"Thanks," he murmured.  "For back there.  Not letting them deep-freeze me."

"You've been frozen by the Tok'ra before.  An undercover Tok'ra, but still.  You wound up being implanted with a Goa'uld symbiote instead of a Tok'ra one, and then frozen again.  Somehow, I didn't think you'd find it a viable option."

"About the implantation," Jack started.

Daniel just gave a swift, sad shake of the head and turned away for a moment, biting his lip.  Jack didn't have to spell it out for him.  He got it, even if he was unhappy about it.  He had once been in the same predicament Jack found himself now. 

"This is interesting," Selmak announced.  "Colonel O'Neill's condition is not what we first thought."

"He isn't dying?" Carter said quickly, all kinds of relieved.

"He is dying," Selmak responded dampeningly.  "But we think we know the cause."

Well, whoop-de-do.

"When we first compared Colonel O'Neill's DNA samples to the ones we had on file, the match was almost perfect," Fraiser said.

"Almost?" Daniel frowned at her.  "You said there was a tiny abnormality."

"That's right.  And Selmak thinks he knows why."

"Way to milk the moment, Jacob," Jack snapped. 

"You are not Colonel O'Neill," Selmak informed him.

Huh?  "Haven't we just spent days, not to say gallons of blood I can apparently ill afford, establishing that I _am_ Colonel O'Neill?" Jack argued, astounded.

"You are a clone."

"WHAT?" Jack hollered.

"Oh, my God!" Daniel bounced.  "I think I know what's going on here!"

"Please," Hammond urged him.  "Enlighten us."

"The very existence of the Asgard depends on their ability to clone their bodies and then transfer their consciousness from one body to the next," Daniel blurted out in a breathless rush.

"But they suffer from grave medical conditions due to thousands of years of cloning," Carter quickly added.

"Which will ultimately lead to the fall of their civilization if they can't solve the problem of diminishing returns in their cloning technology," Daniel said.

"What does this have to do with Colonel O'Neill?" Hammond asked, about as clued in as Jack was.

"We had the DNA of the abductees Teal'c and I interviewed scanned for the same anomalies as Jack's.  Janet, you have those results?"

Fraiser nodded, making a few rapid keystrokes at the computer.  She and Selmak quickly scanned the screens of fresh data, then she turned around, comprehension dawning.  "The anomaly isn't present in any of these DNA samples."

"Which means none of these abductees are clones," Daniel explained rapidly.  "Which means..."

"The real Colonel O'Neill is still out there!" Carter crowed.  "In all likelihood, the Asgard responsible took the original people and replaced them with clones for the duration of his experiments so as not to arouse suspicion.  That's why this...duplicate O'Neill...retained the memories of the real Colonel O'Neill."

"And the fact that Jack is still missing suggests the Asgard responsible studies the originals for a period of time before switching them back!" Daniel shot back.

"The previous actions of the Asgard responsible indicate a desire to remain covert," Teal'c said thoughtfully.

"You think whoever took the real Colonel O'Neill is going to return him?" Hammond asked.

The real Colonel O'Neill was right there.  Whatever, whoever they thought he was, he _knew_.  He _was_ Jack O'Neill.

"It's all we've got, Sir," Carter said.  "We have to hope the fact that Colonel O'Neill's clone hasn't fully matured is a mistake."

"The condition of Jack's clone is a dead giveaway," Daniel agreed.

Dead being the operative word.  Not that Daniel was trying to be insensitive or anything, he'd only learned the love of his life was alive and intact and out there somewhere.  Jack was Jack, but he wasn't Daniel's Jack.  That...hurt.

"So it's a good bet the Asgard responsible doesn't even know there's a problem, or he would've tried to fix it," Carter deduced.

"Well, they'll figure it out when they try to switch him back," Hammond suggested.

"So, to sum up," Jack said stonily, abruptly recalling their attention.  "You're saying the Asgard took the real me and made a copy?  An unstable one at that?"

"I'm sorry," Daniel said, visibly upset. 

"What about the fact this body is dying?  Has anyone even thought about that?"

"I have," Daniel replied when no one else did.  "Even if you aren't the...original...Jack, I want to help you.  I promised I'd help you."

Jack's world was crashing down around him but he distantly noted the small kindness, that Daniel had said the original Jack, not the real one.

"Perhaps the Asgard responsible can correct his mistake," Teal'c suggested.

"We could try to intercept the switch," Carter said to the general.

They had come to it, Daniel and him, just not in the way he'd imagined.  Because the real Jack was out there, and the real Jack would be back, and Daniel would be okay.

This Jack was stuck in this scrawny little body and if he lived, _if_ he lived, he would never have his life back.  He would never have Daniel or his family.  He would have to start over, make himself his own man.  He had to start now, or give up here and die.

The strangest thing _had_ happened. 

What else could he do but come up fighting?

"The switch is me for the original O'Neill, right?" he said.  "Okay, then.  I'm not suggesting you use me as bait and hang me out to dry.  Just give me a nine-mil, I'll get a cure out of the sucker."

"We don't know who or what you'll be facing," Daniel protested.

"Look, you're never going to intercept one of those Asgard beams."  Jack appealed directly to the general.  "I'm your only chance of capturing this guy.  Give me a weapon."

Hammond shot him a long, assessing look.

"Come on," Jack urged him.

"A zat gun," Hammond conceded.

"Good enough."

 

* * *

 

 

Jack, Daniel, Carter and Teal'c sat at the table on his, or rather, the real O'Neill's deck.  Hard not to remember the last night he'd sat out on the deck, he'd been making love to Daniel.

"We've calculated a seven day gap in abductions," Carter said.  "That means the switch back will be tonight."

"I don't know if this helps, but all the abductees referenced a floating paralysis as well as the four green globes defying gravity, buzzing around them like insects."  Daniel was trying, but he was finding this every bit as difficult as Jack.  "If you know what to expect..." He trailed off.

"The zat may actually prove more effective in neutralising the Asgard systems than a nine-mil," Carter said, also trying her best to be positive.

"Not so effective in neutralising the Asgard," Jack countered, sour-faced.

"That is not your mission."  Ever the pragmatist, Teal'c was focused on getting the real O'Neill back.  He didn't pretend to care all that much about Jack's fate as the copy, which made him just that bit more honest than everyone else about it.

"We should go over the instructions for the Asgard beam technology," Carter advised.

"I'd rather have a beer," Jack said, nimbly escaping the table before anyone could stop him.  That was one advantage to being this small; he slipped right through killjoy adult fingers.

A last beer for the condemned clone, he thought, making for the fridge.  Or was that a first beer?  Technically, he was only a week old.  Legally, he was fifteen years old, which meant that even if he survived, it would be six years before he got his second beer.  Legally, anyway. He guessed that made it his first and his last beer, at least for the time being.

He took two Heineken out of the fridge, knowing Daniel would have to follow him, talk to him.  Try to make this right.

"You're a good kid," he said pleasantly, handing Daniel the sweating bottle of beer.  "Now, take this kid's advice and just let it go, Daniel.  There's nothing you can do for me and you know it."

"Wow," Daniel said, hitching his butt up on the kitchen counter.  "You rehearse that?"

Jack toasted him and took a long, appreciative drink.

"I can't tell if you're handling this better or worse than I think," Daniel fretted.  "This morning, we would have given anything to save your life, and now..."

"It's not my life?"

"I don't know what to say you to, Jack.  I don't know what to do."

"Quit your worrying."

"Whatever you look like, you have the knowledge, the memories and experience of Jack O'Neill.  You're a real person.  Being a copy doesn't change that."

"It will.  In time it will.  From now on, my life -- if I have a life -- will be different.  _I'll_ be different.  I've got no choice, Daniel.  I can't just give up."

"No one is asking you to," Daniel said quickly.

"No one cares but you," Jack retorted.  "They want the original back.  And you, you prefer the vintage model."  He smiled to take the sting from this, for Daniel's sake.  "Me, I can't give up.  And I can't go back.  All I can do is go on."

Daniel was desperately sorry for him, for everything that had happened to him, but it was what it was.  The only thing they could do for each other now was walk away. 

"Be dark soon.  I'll get set up in the bedroom while you take your positions outside like we planned."  Jack took his beer, and walked away.

Going into the bedroom rattled him.  For all his brave sentiments and noble intentions, it was impossible to sit on the bed and not remember the exquisite sensation of Daniel going down on him only days before, or stifle the memories of all the other times they'd made love here. 

A clean break?

He raged at the memory of happiness, at love, hating himself and Daniel and the goddamned chilling _unfairness_ of it all.

"Colonel?" Carter's voice sounded over the radio waiting on the bedside table.  "Everything okay?"

Jack keyed his radio.  "Peachy."

"I'm in position," Carter reported.

Jack keyed his radio again.  "Daniel, Teal'c?"

"We are also in position, O'Neill."

"Do you have the restraints ready for when you run into the Asgard?" Carter asked.

"In my pocket."

"You want to go over those instructions now?" Carter persisted.

"Don't worry, Carter, I'm sure I'll figure it out," Jack said impatiently, tossing the radio.

Nothing to do now but wait. 

Alone in what he felt his own space, his bravado finally crumbled.  He didn't cry, but tension weighted his body, spiked his head, pain crushed his chest like his heart was squeezed by a fist.  He knew this cold, dead pain.  He knew grief.  Loss.  For Charlie, for Sara, the marriage he'd destroyed.  For Daniel, dying then and all but dead to him now.  For family, his Mom, his Dad and Ruth, who touched every part of him.  For everyone he loved.  Everything he'd been through, everything he was.  For his life.

White light blinded him, then he was suspended in air.  He glanced around, recognising the sleek, sophisticated lines of an Asgard ship.

"Hello," said a voice.  The Asgard responsible.  "Do not be afraid."

Jack zatted the little sucker, vindictively pleased to see him crumple to the ground.  Then he looked up, spotted something orange and technical-looking, and zatted that too.

He plummeted to the deck with a thud that punched the wind right out him.  He groaned pitifully and had to lie there until he got some breath back.  His legs wobbled like a colt's when he finally went for the Asgard, and skinny little grey ass or no, it was much harder for him than he'd imagined to lift the fragile dead weight and manhandle it into the nearby pod. 

Then he'd wished he had let Carter run through those instructions one more time, because there were two consoles and he couldn't remember which was the right one.  He went to the nearest and took a look at the curved, polished surface.  "Okay.  Wrong console."  He moved over to the right console, which had several glowing stones set in ovals carved on its surface.  "Far right jewel thingy, up," he recited, moving the stone.  Nothing happened.  "Ah, and three o'clock."  He turned the jewel thingy.

White light flared, then the gang was all here, all in one piece and safe on the ship, despite what Carter thought of Jack's competence with the Asgard beams.  They were torn between checking out the sci-fi fantasy ship and the rogue Asgard, and checking out their precious version of O'Neill, who didn't look like he was awake yet.

Jack couldn't help himself, he had to go check himself out.  See precisely what he was giving up everything for. 

"What's going on?" the older O'Neill asked, looking around him in confusion, at least as thrown by Jack's presence as anything else going on.  Like Jack had known when he first looked in the bathroom mirror, the older, the vintage O'Neill knew this face looking back at him.

Not even Daniel could come up with a coherent explanation, not right away.  Especially not when the last thing Vintage O'Neill remembered doing was him.

Jack looked O'Neill over.  The face was familiar, the eyes and the hair, he'd seen those often enough in the mirror.  What surprised him though, were his own proportions.  No wonder this body didn't feel right to him!

"Wow," he said.  "I'm, uh, I'm really much taller than I think."

Vintage O'Neill looked even more confused.

"What's going on?" he demanded again.

"We're pretty sure this Asgard kidnapped you and attempted to replace you with a clone," Daniel told O'Neill, glancing across to Jack and away again, upset and relieved, happy and sorry and acutely aware all at once.

Vintage O'Neill looked at Daniel's uniform, which he hadn't been wearing when last seen in bed, at Carter and Teal'c, and finally Jack.  "How long was I asleep?" he asked plaintively.

"Seven days," Carter replied.

"That's a record," O'Neill quipped, staring at Jack.  "So.  You're...me?"

"You," Jack said at the same time.  "Yeah, uh, believe me, if you think it's weird, imagine how I feel being the copy."

There was a low, heart-rending groan from the Asgard.  No more than the little bastard deserved.

"He is awakened," Teal'c observed.

With a score to settle, Daniel marched over to the pod, Carter following.  Jack watched them, then caught the vintage model watching him.

"What is happening?" the Asgard asked, as confused as O'Neill.

"We were kind of hoping you could tell us," Carter said.

"No, no, no, this is all wrong!" the little guy panicked.

"Hey!" O'Neill snapped, storming over to the pod with unnecessary drama.  "I'll tell you what's wrong.  I just woke up, haven't had coffee, let alone a pee in seven days, and I find out you stole my ass and made a...mini-me!  Daniel, Carter, I should be irked currently, yes?"

Jack thought O'Neill _was_ an ass.  Not something he'd have chosen to see first-hand about himself, so that made the irked score two.

"Yes, I would be," Carter said.

"Why don't you tell us who you are?" Daniel invited the Asgard, finding it easier to focus his attention there than to have to look at both Jacks.

"Loki."

"According to Norse mythology, that's the god of mischief," Daniel told O'Neill.

It was what Daniel did.  He always turned to O'Neill before anyone.  Didn't even think about it, that was where his instinct took him.  Jack fought another surge of anger.  Unreasonable of him to resent Daniel doing precisely what he'd told him, reconnecting with the real O'Neill.

"What did you want with Colonel O'Neill?" Carter prompted.

"I have nothing more to say to any of you," the Asgard sulked.

"Hey! We just saved your flat little white asses from the Replicators. This is the thanks we get?" O'Neill snapped, unconsciously echoing what Jack had been saying for days.

"Hey, at least you're gonna live," Jack snapped back, passing irk to anger.  It was just me, me, me with this guy.

"What?"

"Maybe you're a little put out, but this guy didn't hit all the right buttons on the Xerox. This body is gonna fall apart if he doesn't fix me."

"I cannot," Loki denied.  "All the clones suffer the same fate."

"Okay," O'Neill said.  "I'm going back to my original question. What's going on?"

"I am a scientist, a former geneticist with the Asgard Ruling Council," Loki explained.

"Former?" Carter queried.

"I was stripped of my stature after I was caught performing unsanctioned experiments on humans."

"What?" O'Neill said indignantly.  "You've got sanctioned ones?"

"I merely had the courage to do what was necessary to advance our cloning technology."

"Instead of courage, some might call it a lack of morality," Carter coldly corrected him.

"Our population cannot withstand the duplication process for much longer."

"Well, how can experimenting on humans change that?" Carter asked reasonably.

"Your bodies are similar to our original form thousands of years ago. Using your physical makeup as a template, I had hoped to find a way to construct a clone that could contain our massively superior intellect.  My research was unsuccessful."

"So much for massively superior intellect," Jack sneered.

"I was gonna say that," O'Neill said sharply.

"I was going to say it was unsuccessful prior to my being caught and banished," Loki said haughtily.  "I would have found what I needed eventually."

"Why risk coming back here and breaking the law after nineteen years?" Daniel demanded, finding his voice and his bearings again.

"Because, I thought he was the one."

"Me?" Jack and O'Neill said simultaneously.

"I believed his genetic code contained the key."

"Mine?" they said as one, again.

"Stop it," O'Neill ordered.

Jack didn't blame him.  This great-minds-think-alike thing was creepy.

"He was physiologically advanced enough to carry and utilize all the data from the Ancient repository of knowledge," Loki explained.  "That would not be possible for any human one generation ago.  He is a significant step forward on your evolutionary path."

"You just found this out recently?" Daniel frowned.

"I learned about it when all the Asgard did.  O'Neill is legendary."

Everyone looked amazed, including O'Neill.

"Most recently, the Asgard fleet has been distracted by the war with the Replicators and the subsequent relocation of our people."

"So, you took the opportunity when no one was looking to sneak back here," O'Neill said coldly.

"I do not regret my actions.  I am trying to save my people," Loki said with an attempt at dignity.

"Look, I know this isn't all about me," Jack interrupted, not entirely without empathy for Loki's point of view.  "But come on!  Seriously.  I'm dying here!"

"I cannot reverse your fate," Loki apologised.  "Nor can I explain why you did not mature to the proper age as you should have."

"Well, easy to see why they kicked you out of the Asgard science club," Jack snarled, wanting to zat the little bastard again.

"Alright, I've heard enough," O'Neill decided, marching over to the control console.  "Carter?  Can you call Thor on this thing?"

Carter obediently followed.

"Please, do not," Loki begged.

"We've already tried contacting the Asgard a number of times," Carter told O'Neill, sliding jewel thingies around expertly.  "Okay.  Pretty sure that's it."

Everyone waited expectantly.  And waited.

"Alright," Jack said.  "How long are we go..."  He trailed off, stumbling physically as a wave of exhaustion hit him from nowhere, so giddy for a second, he had to close his eyes and hold on to the console.

"You alright?" O'Neill asked him.

"Actually, no."

"Uh, what do we do if Thor doesn't show up?" Daniel fretted.

White light blazed, and Thor appeared on the transport pad.

"Never mind," Daniel said.

"Well, it's about time!" O'Neill called out to Thor.

Jack thought O'Neill was pushing the centre-of-attention thing way too far.  The vintage model had only been awake ten minutes.  He wasn't dying or losing the love of his late life, but he was sure acting like it.

"I apologize for not coming sooner."  Thor went right to the root of the problem.  "Loki, what have you done?"

Jack spoke up quickly.  "It seems he's been playing Dr. Moreau behind your back."

"Yes!" O'Neill echoed, pathetically trying to reclaim the limelight.  "Dr. Moreau!"

"You know why I am here," Thor informed Loki.  "You should have known O'Neill's genetic code was safeguarded for his own protection."

"Excuse me?" O'Neill said.

"A marker was placed in your DNA to prevent any attempts at genetic manipulation."

"The abnormality?" Daniel speculated.

"That's why the clone didn't mature," Carter realised.

Thor walked across to Jack and O'Neill.  "Loki will be punished for his actions."

Good to know, and richly deserved, but not terribly useful.

"Is it true that Colonel O'Neill is the key to solving your cloning problems?" Carter asked, once more losing sight of the bigger picture.

"No."

"But I thought I was advanced?" O'Neill whined.

"Indeed you are, O'Neill," Thor assured him.  "But our scientists have already determined that while you are an important step forward in the evolutionary chain, the missing link we have been searching for still eludes us."

"I'm sorry," O'Neill said.

Thor was embarrassed.  "Again, I apologize for any inconvenience Loki may have caused."

Inconvenience?  "Yeah, that's what I'd call it," Jack snapped.

"Unfortunately, the eventual genetic breakdown of the clone is not my doing," Thor told them.  "But rather a result of Loki's inept methods."

"There was no need for the clones to survive," Loki piped up.

Damn, that was cold!  Instinctively, Jack looked to Daniel, unable to completely take in he'd just been written off like that.  After everything he'd been through!  They were just going to let him die?

Even O'Neill felt for him.

"Look, Thor? Is there anything you can do for him?" O'Neill asked.  "The whining is starting to grate."

Thor was astounded.  "You wish your clone to live?"

"You can't just let me die!" Jack shouted.

"He's just a kid," O'Neill said.

Petty, yes, but Jack would've loved to be a fly on the bedroom wall when O'Neill discovered there was a younger, cuter Jack sauntering around with all his experience _and_ the teenage sex drive to boot.

"Are you certain, O'Neill?" Thor asked.

Like it was up to the old guy!

"Jack," Daniel prompted warningly, not messing.

"Yeah."

Jack smacked him upside the arm -- he couldn't reach the head -- anyway. 

"Very well," Thor agreed.  "I will attempt to repair his DNA. If successful, he should continue to mature at a normal human rate."

"Thank you," Daniel said gratefully, smiling at Jack.

This Jack, not the older O'Neill.

Thor got the repairs underway immediately, re-initialising the orange technical-looking thing to swoop Jack back into mid-air.  The green globes put in an appearance, buzzing around him while Thor manipulated jewel thingies on the console.  Not much else happened, either seen or felt, and continued to not happen for quite a while.

Jack could see Daniel lingering close by, a little more anxious just now for Jack than he was relieved for O'Neill.  O'Neill was lingering close by Daniel, patently uncomfortable now he'd been brought up to speed and knew this Jack knew everything he knew, including Daniel.  Especially Daniel.

"What are we going to do with him?" Carter asked O'Neill, nodding in Jack's direction.

"Whatever he decides," Daniel said quite sharply.

"The Air Force will take care of it," O'Neill shrugged.

"Does this child not represent a considerable threat to security?" Teal'c enquired.

"You mean rogue agents might offer him candy?" Carter joked.

"I mean that he might be captured and tortured for information by elements unsympathetic to Stargate Command."

"Relax, T," O'Neill advised.  "He is me, after all.  The only think likely to break is the voice."

"Can we not talk about Jack like he's not here?" Daniel said even more sharply than before.

"I'm Jack," O'Neill protested.

"So is he!" Daniel retorted.

"Jonathon," Jack broke in.  "Or John.  Haven't decided."

"It is done," Thor announced.

Thank God!

Jack was lowered to the ground much more gently than before, Daniel quick to lend him a hand up. 

"Thank you," he said gratefully to Thor.

"You are welcome."

"You're sure I'll grow up the way I'm supposed to?  No nasty surprises down the road?"

"Like your balls not dropping?" O'Neill suggested sarcastically.

"Colonel!" Carter objected prudishly.

"You will be fine," Thor promised.

"Yes," Jack decided, an oddly freeing bubble of optimism surfacing now he was out from under the sentence of imminent painful death.  He always did better with the concrete than the abstract, with show, not tell.  He felt weird but he also felt good.  Wide awake and pain-free.  And really, self-pity aside, he hadn't felt any worse in this body when he _was_ fifteen.  Making it all work, getting it all to fit, that was what growing up was all about.  And this time, he had the advantage of knowing that going in.  "I will."

"You are experiencing increased health and vitality," Teal'c observed, easing up on Jack now he came Asgard-approved.

"Hey!" O'Neill protested on cue.  "There's nothing wrong with my vitality."

"Déjà vu," Carter muttered.  Then she smiled at Jack.  "I'm glad you're okay.  Now you really do have the chance to go back, do it all again, only with the benefit of a lifetime's experience."

"Get it right this time, you mean?" Jack asked innocently.

Daniel trod heavily on his O'Neill's foot before he could insert it back in his mouth, unleashed a devastating smile on him, then turned it on Jack.  "If you need me, you know where I'll be."

Nowhere Jack could, or would, reach him.  "I'll be fine," he promised.

Daniel's eyes were very gentle.  "Yes, I think you will be."

It was a fine note to end on.  Unfortunately, there were plenty of hoops left for Jack to jump through before he was done.  Thor had to apologise another time or three for Loki, promise creative punishment and a permanent ban on human experimentation, genetic or otherwise, before he consented to beam Jack and the gang into the SGC briefing room.

George Hammond was waiting for SG-1, too kind a man to look anything other than pleased he had two Jacks in front of him instead of the hoped-for one.

"I see the mission had a successful outcome," he said with a generous smile.  "I imagine we've got a lot to talk about."

"You and me, yes," Jack said emphatically.  "Them, no."

"Excuse me?" O'Neill swaggered patronisingly.

"You got your life back," Jack said sharply.  "Now let me start mine."

"What that life might be has yet to be determined, son," Hammond told him.

"I hope that isn't a hint you're planning to keep me here against my will or shove me into a cell at Area 51," Jack warned.  "I guess don't need to tell you how unpleasant I'd make that for everyone."

"There's no suggestion of confinement," Hammond assured him. "But you have to concede there are legitimate security concerns that need to be addressed here.  You have intimate knowledge of the Stargate programme, Earth's defences, our alien allies and technologies.  It would be catastrophic if those fell into the wrong hands."

"No more likely to happen to me than to the vintage model here," Jack argued, jerking a thumb at the older O'Neill.

"Vintage?" O'Neill repeated, all haughty and offended.

"If the knee brace fits, buddy."

"Jack," Daniel protested with a chuckle he couldn't entirely suppress.

"General, how soon can we get the little brat out of here?" O'Neill asked.

"The little brat is you," Daniel reminded O'Neill in a rather pointed aside.

"Do we need to separate you two boys?" Carter asked with a grin, enjoying the show.

"That's 'Sir' to you," Jack and O'Neill said as one.

"Uh, not to you," Carter said smugly to Jack, the grin widening into a Cheshire cat.  She was untouchable now and she knew it.  This was fun for her.

"Pick on someone your own size," Jack snapped, glowering.  "General, you see what I've had to put up with?  You see why I need to get out of here?  I'm a joke.  I'm cute, for God's sake.  I'd make the perfect National Enquirer cover boy.  I've got no chance of making it here, no contribution anyone will let me make.  People don't hear me, they don't see me, unless it's to laugh at my expense."

"That's a little unfair," Daniel said quietly.

"I don't mean you, Daniel," Jack apologised a touch impatiently.  "You've been great."

"Sam and Dr. Fraiser did everything in their power to help."

"Yeah, and I'm not ungrateful for that.  You just had to keep reminding them to talk _to_ me, instead of about me to you."

"That is unfair," Carter objected.

"And it's pointless talking about it.  General, I just, I want to get out of here," Jack appealed directly.  "I need to go.  I have to go.  I have to make my own way, some place people see me as me, and not the junior version of him."

"The vintage model," O'Neill quoted sarcastically.

"Where would you go?" Hammond asked Jack.

"Chicago."

"So far?" Daniel was dismayed.

"You think I have any choice?  My family is here.  My Mom is active in the community, at the schools.  She has her nose into everything that concerns this command and a pretty efficient spy ring from everything we've learned this week.  How long before she spots my scrawny little ass walking around?  What do you think she'd do?  This is Kate O'Neill we're talking about.  There's not a snowball's chance in Netu she'd let me go my own way, keep her yap shut, not interfere.  Nope, she'd move me right into the house.  You want to acquire a kid brother this late in life?" Jack challenged O'Neill.  "Especially one who used to be you?"

"God, no!" O'Neill recoiled with unalloyed horror.

"At least in Chicago, I can get a fresh start.  I know the city, I know the system.  I can enrol in school, I'd be safe there.  Out of everyone's hair.  I just need you, George, to set me up with an apartment and some money.  My current salary would do fine."

"I'm sure it would," Hammond replied humorously, not committing to anything.  He directed a questioning look at O'Neill.

"No!" Jack objected, walking in front of O'Neill.  "Don't talk to him, talk to me.  This is my life.  _I_ get to decide."

"General, please," Daniel spoke up in Jack's defence.  "Jack is right.  He didn't ask for this to happen to him, but it has.  We need to remember that as much as he might look like a boy on the outside, on the inside he's a man.  He _is_ Jack O'Neill and he does have the right to decide what to do with his life.  And remember, even though he was dying and he knew it meant he had to give up everything, he helped us get our Jack back.  Now he's going to live a normal life, it's only fair that we help him.  We owe him."

"I have to agree, Sir," Carter spoke up.

"I also believe it to be fair recompense for the return of Colonel O'Neill," Teal'c weighed in.

"The farther the better, if you ask me," O'Neill offered by way of support.

"The NID have a field office in Chicago," Hammond said slowly.  "I believe Agent Barrett would be willing to vouch for an agent who could check in with our boy here from time to time."

"Call me John.  John O'Neill."  It sounded thick and clumsy on his tongue, but...he could live with it.  He thought he could.  Right now, that was all that mattered.  "That's O'Neill with two 'l's."

"You'll be on your own, John," Daniel said gently, hardly hesitating at all over the freaky, alien name.

"That's the point.  That's what I need."

"A clean break, huh?" said O'Neill, finally grasping they didn't get to share.

"Very well," Hammond consented.  "I'll start the necessary paperwork."

Ja-- _John_ hardly realised the strain he'd been feeling until some of the load was lifted.  He rustled up a grin for Daniel and tried hard to look as if this was all falling into place for him instead of cutting him off.

"Hey, old guy," he taunted O'Neill.  "A word with you.  In private," he emphasised, with a meaningful glance in Daniel's direction.  "Would you guys give us the room?"  There were things that had to be said, things that needed to kept between O'Neill and him.

"I'll give you five minutes, son, then you and I need to sit down and discuss the fine print on this deal," Hammond warned, going into his office.

Teal'c loomed large to put two heavy hands on Jack's shoulders.  "You are a wise man, John O'Neill," he said with a measure of approval.  "Grow strong and honour your name."

Jack -- _John_ \-- had nothing for him.  No witty retort or repartee.  He'd set himself up to walk away, to walk alone, knew he had to do it, but now it was on him, reality sank like a stone.  He had an anvil on his chest, here.

"Good luck," Carter said with a smile, surprising him with a quick, affectionate rub on the arm.  "Trust Agent Barrett.  He'll look out for you."

He really wasn't going to see them again.  Ever.  He felt weirdly numb about it all, as if they were some place distant from him, or him from them, and he couldn't seem to do anything about it.

Daniel came to him then, wrapping him a generous hug.  Now this felt real, this touched him, but it also felt different to him, different than before.  This was a hug for John, a friend, a kid.  Not Jack.  Not a lover.  Not any more. 

"Goodbye, John," Daniel whispered.  "You take care."

Jack squeezed him hard, all the answer he had, ashamed he had to wait for Daniel to let him go.  He could not watch Daniel walk away from him, turning instead to the Stargate and all the shit he was leaving behind.

"It's a rough break, kid," O'Neill said quietly, coming to stand beside him.

"I'm not a kid."

"I know."

"It's just easier to think of me that way.  As a kid and not as you.  Less creepy that way, for both of us."  He shot O'Neill a malicious look.  "I'm at least as freaked by you as you are by me, you know.  We don't react well in these situations.  Best if I go."

"You sure you want to do this?"

"You think I have any choice?"

"Realistically, no."

"I need to know you'll take care of some stuff."

"Mom and Dad, Daniel, Ruth.  Goes without saying."

"Not just that.  I'm going to live a lot longer than you, old man, and just because I can't be with them, can't even _see_ them, it doesn't mean I'll forget them or forget how I feel for them.  When Ruth, when Mom and Dad pass, I expect you to find me.  I don't care what it takes.  You have to _promise_ you'll find me."

"I will."

No bluster, no bull.  O'Neill looked faintly sick, looked to be carrying a little weight there on his own chest.  O'Neill knew how he'd feel if it happened to him, if he wasn't there for them.  Jack believed him.

"If Daniel..." he said thickly, really fighting it now, the awful, vital, self-imposed separation.  "If _anything_..."

"I won't let anything hurt him," O'Neill promised.

"He's been through too much already.  I don't want him carrying anything more."

"You know I would do _anything_ ," O'Neill said deliberately.  "Anything for him."

There was just one thing more.  One final break.  Each and every day after Daniel's death, Jack had remembered having to let him go, had asked himself what he wouldn't have given to have him back.  Every day.  He remembered Daniel's pain more clearly than his grief, the pain consuming him.  What choice had he but to free Daniel from that?  There was not a thing he could do for him, nothing but that. 

What he wouldn't have given.

He'd survived Daniel's death.  He'd survive this.  It couldn't be harder for him to take.  He couldn't feel more hurt Daniel was alive and whole and safe, only not with him.

What would he give? 

"He loves you, you know," he told O'Neill.  "You should be proud, what he was prepared to do this past week, when he thought this was it."  He brought both hands to his chest in mute illustration.  "When he thought I was you.  He just needs to trust it, ease up on himself.  You help him with that."

The bone-deep wrongness of this man beside him, the weight of everything Jack was giving up to him, it rose to close his throat.  O'Neill seemed to get Jack had done all he could here, that there was _nothing_ more.

"If you need anything..." O'Neill offered, obligated and freaked and hating it as much as Jack was.

"Don't worry.  I won't keep in touch."

"I'd better go," O'Neill said uncomfortably.  "He'll be waiting."

John O'Neill had to walk away before Jack did.  Had to move, had to keep moving.  Had to be his own man.  His love and his family were waiting, but they were not waiting for him. 

John was a man alone.

 

* * *

 

 

Daniel and Jack were back where all this began, in the bedroom.  In the bed.  Lying on their sides facing each other, close enough to touch and kiss.

"You liked the kid," Jack prompted Daniel, his mood indulgent.  He'd had his coffee, and his pee, and now he had his Daniel too.

"He was you," Daniel said a little heavily.

"If you don't want to talk about it..."

"It's not that," Daniel demurred.  "It's just that I feel bad for him."

"He scored a pretty sweet deal out of Hammond.  Got an apartment, even an Air Force salary, and the NID looking out for him.  I'm guessing he'll do just fine."

"In Chicago."

"Well, having him stick around here would've been weird."

"He wanted to get away from me."

"I thought it was me he wanted to get away from.  Why you?"

"For the same reasons you would have wanted to get away from me, if your positions had been reversed."

Jack didn't want to field that one, going for a joking response instead.  "Personally, I think he was trying to get away from the folks, Mom especially.  I must have thirty years on the kid, and she's bad enough with me."

"That's pretty much what he said," Daniel smiled, letting him away with it.

"You two actually talked about stuff?"

"I thought he was you."  Daniel slid closer, caressing the stubbornly set jaw.  "I thought he was dying and I thought he was you."

Softening, Jack stroked Daniel's face too.  "It's been a rough week for you," he acknowledged, kissing him tenderly.

It was still so new, so incredible to Daniel that Jack would trust him this much, open up to him this way, unafraid to show and share his feelings.  It made him trust enough to want to reciprocate.

"Want to know the worst thing about it?"

Jack pulled Daniel closer, rubbing his back comfortingly.

"When I found out he was a clone, I was glad," Daniel confessed.  "The kid was dying and losing everything, and I was only glad he wasn't you."

"Don't beat yourself up for being human, Daniel, not after everything you've already been through," Jack encouraged.  "And don't tell me that's what he said too."

Daniel grinned ruefully and shared another kiss.

"I guess I've realised a lot about myself this week, Jack.  I know I haven't been so confident as you, not about us.  I don't have all the memories you have, the experience, I don't know the time we had together the way you do.  I understand this feels like picking up and moving on to you, that it's a continuation, but to me, this is all new."

"It's okay," Jack promised, making with the nice rubbing thing again.

"It is," Daniel smiled.  "It really is.  That's what I've learned about myself this week.  I started out thinking I wasn't bringing as much to the relationship as you, that I wasn't -- sure -- about my feelings for you.  Until I thought I was losing you, and then I learned I'd give anything for you."

"Cool." 

They kissed again, more deeply than before, sweet as sin.

Figuring he'd won, Jack had the grace to make an admission.  "I guess you and the kid, you shared something while I was gone."

"It's only been a week, Jack, and already he's a different person than you," Daniel said with care, finally recognising this was true.  "I mean, when we first realised he was your clone, he thought his life was over, that he was through.  He tried to hold on to being the Jack O'Neill he thought he was, he tried to be you." 

Daniel put a hand over Jack's mouth, silencing any counter-claims about who was better than who.

"I think on the Asgard ship reality set in when he finally saw you.  You had that life and he realised he had to set out to be somebody new."

"I think going back to high school was taking it way too far."

Daniel chuckled at Jack's eloquent shudder.  "Then I guess that's where the two of you differ.  He's looking forward to doing it all again." 

He slid closer to Jack, offering up another kiss.  Jack's arms around him, Jack's mouth on his, he could've stayed like this forever.  Only the thought kept occurring that John had loved him too, loved him this way, and while he had Jack, John had nothing and no one.

"Hey," Jack scolded gently when Daniel's head dropped.

"Sorry.  Just feeling a little weird about being happy after everything that's just happened."

"Better get used to it, Daniel," Jack warned softly.  "Because we get knocked down like this, we get our lives turned upside down, we take this risk all the time."

"I want to think of John the way I think of myself," Daniel confided, doing his damndest to be confident and natural about it in the way Jack was.  "Not because it's easier," he added hastily.

"God forbid!"

"I'd rather be hopeful for him, you know?  He's not the man he was, he'll never get back to the life he knew.  All he can do is go on.  Build a new life, a new self, with what he has."

The expression on Jack's face, the emotions darkening his eyes were almost too complex for Daniel to read.  Sorrow and grief.  Protectiveness.  Rage.  Love.  Daniel was so moved by him, moved close to him, giving himself up to a fierce embrace.

"I forget," Jack apologised roughly, nuzzling restively, compulsively over Daniel's shoulder, throat, cheek and brow.  "I don't like to think what you've been through, that this amnesia is no joke to you.  You're right to feel what you do about the kid.  I like to be hopeful for you, I like to see you looking forward and not back.  And maybe the simple truth is on some level I _know_ you can't get back.  I know you're not that man.  I don't care, Daniel.  I love _you_."

"It's more than I hoped," Daniel whispered, choked with gratitude.  "Memory fails, but I trust the _feeling_ , Jack.  I trust us.  It's, it's _right_ for me to be with you.  It's meant.  I love you and this all I need.  You're all I know.  I can hardly tell you how different I feel when I'm with you, so light and so sure.  You're...you're all there is for me."

He could not be more direct.  He could say no more.  All that he felt, all that he hoped, he offered up in a heated rush of lips and touch, laid bare by love.

 

* * *

 

 

When she saw her two boys at the kitchen door of Chez O'Neill, Kate let out a squeal.  She flew out to them, practically throwing herself at Jack.  Her Jack, her darling boy, the right height, the right weight, the right age, the right scowl.

"Thank God!" she said gratefully, suppressing a few tears.  "How did they put you right?" she demanded eagerly, yanking him into the house.

"Jack doesn't think he's ever been wrong," Daniel joked, accepting a hug with far more grace than her Jack ever had.  He let her kiss him, then sat down at the family table next to Jack.

Kate beamed.

"Coffee, boys?"

"Only if it comes with breakfast attached," Jack smirked.

"I could use a little..." Daniel hinted hopefully, rubbing his lovely flat tummy.

"A little what, love?" Kate coaxed.

"Honestly?  Anything."

Jack turned around to glare at him.  "There is nothing wrong with the way I cook."

"That's true," Kate said with a grin.  "He hasn't had the fire trucks out front for months."

"Where's Dad?"

"Sleeping," Kate said cheerfully.  "He heard the alarm, but claimed he'd been up all night peeing and needed his beauty sleep."

"Ruth?"

"Napping for now, fully expecting breakfast in bed."

"I was so hoping we'd timed it right," Daniel said happily.

"Pancakes, bacon and eggs?" Kate offered.

"I think I love you, Kate."

"You always did."

It was the work of a moment to whip froth onto her pancake mix and start a towering stack for the boys.  The pans were already heated, waiting for bacon and eggs.  She warmed bread in the oven, prepared a pot of coffee, squeezed oranges for fresh juice.  Nothing she hadn't done a thousand times before, but Daniel was easy impressed.

"He's going to get fat," Jack complained, watching their boy wolf it down.

"Better?" Kate asked Daniel solicitously.  He gave her a thumbs up and liberated a slice of Jack's bacon in a sneak attack.  Kate smiled at them both.  "Now," she instructed.  "Explain."

"Explain what?" Jack asked, purposefully dense.

"One week ago, you were fifteen."

"That was the by-product of a failed genetic experiment," Jack said straight-faced.

"A clone," Daniel explained, all big eyes and innocence.

"I was kidnapped by aliens," Jack added with relish.  "Even though Daniel was in the house at the time."

They looked so proud of themselves, bless them, Kate felt obliged to play along.

"Bull," she retorted briskly.  "I know for a fact cloning doesn't work that way and I'm not buying little green men."

They weren't green of course.  They were grey.  She recalled that distinctly; the Roswell-cliché face of the thing, the mist she floated on and the globes.  It was the globes that were green. 

Of course she'd never told anyone about this.  Never admitted to a soul, not even her beloved Joe, she'd been abducted by an alien you found on T-shirts.  Decades before the X-Files aired, Kate was not _that_ dumb.

"Didn't I tell you boys you needed to come up with a better cover?" she said impatiently. 

Honestly, if the aliens sent _her_ back all those years ago, what could they possibly see in her son?

"If you're not going to tell me the truth, then make yourself useful, Jack.  Go drag your Dad out of bed."

She watched Daniel watching Jack, sorry to see him leave, but happy to watch him go.

"You're _glowing_ this morning, Daniel," she said teasingly.  "Must be all that great sex you boys are having."

"You're as subtle as a kick to the head, Kate," Daniel retorted, blushing delightfully.

"While I admit it would be easier to just ask straight out how you and Jack are getting along, I firmly believe the last thing you boys want or need is a boring, traditional, humdrum Mom," Kate explained with dignity.  "Just think back to how my boy looked a few days ago, and how cool I was about those people shrinking him, and try telling me I'm wrong.  Conventional, cookie-cutter PTA Mom would have dropped on the spot."

"There's a _tool_ for cutting _cookies_?"  Daniel was amazed.  "Isn't biting them enough?"

He was so indignant over it, Kate had to laugh.  She bounced up from her chair, ruffled his hair as she passed him, and grabbed her favourite cookie cookbook.  "You're a smart boy.  You figure it out," she said, handing him the book.  "I'm going to go fetch Ruth, love.  She'll kill me if she finds out you were here and I left her in her room to doze instead of dote."

"Uh huh," Daniel muttered distractedly, a world of chewy, chunky, melty, munchy wonder before his eyes.

Kate strolled out of the kitchen and found Jack's attention had been caught by one of the old family photos on the hallway wall.  This particular one of him could have been taken thirty-odd years ago, or last week, depending on your point of view.

"Good looking kid," Jack commented complacently.

"You're really not going to tell me what they did to you?" she pouted.

"Already did."

"I want an explanation, Jack, not a DNA twist on a rocky urban myth."

"What if it wasn't me they did something to, Mom.  What if it was you?  Have you considered that possibility?  Maybe it wasn't failed genetics but effective hallucinogenics?  Less DNA, more LSD."

"That the kind of thing you usually have laying around in your fridge, son?" Kate asked sweetly, giving him points for creativity.  They'd played this game for a lot of years now.  He wasn't going to disappoint her by coming out with the truth.  There'd be no fun in it.  For either of them.  And this one had the potential to run and run.

"I'm just saying."

"Saying I was tripping." 

"It's much more likely unknown evil forces drugged you than aliens shrank me, don't ya think?"

"Unknown evil forces staking out your fridge?"

"You been making that beer and salsa marinade again, son?" Joe teased good-naturedly, inconveniently emerging from the bedroom and only slightly softening his worshipful wife with a fourth good morning kiss.  "Where's Daniel?"

"In the kitchen, remembering he loves chocolate walnut more than he loves Jack."

"Well, he loves cinnamon oatmeal more than he loves either of you," Jack sniffed.

"I remember!" Daniel crowed delightedly, bursting out of the kitchen brandishing the book.  "Page twenty-seven!"  He pointed proudly at the full-colour, pastry promised land.  "Butter-pecan."

Jack's favourite.

Getting just the teeniest tad tearful, Kate _had_ to hug him.  He was such a sweetheart about it too, handing off the book to Jack to properly hug her back.

"Can we, can we try this?" Daniel asked eagerly.  "Can we make these for Jack?"

"By we, he means you, Mom," Jack said, looking suspiciously kid-at-Christmassy.

The two of them, together, the way they were meant to be, the miracle of it happening again for Jack just melted her heart.  He wasn't the same man, he would never be the way he was before Daniel had died.  Looking at him now though, the way he was now with Daniel, the way Daniel was with him, Kate couldn't entirely regret it. 

She'd never sufficiently appreciated how good Daniel was for Jack, how changed Jack was by being with him.  Daniel had made Jack happy when she'd believed no one could, helped heal the old wounds, the dark grief for Charlie.  She and Joe had seen that in their son, and it had been more than enough for them to open their hearts to Daniel, bring him into their family. 

The true change in Jack, the ways in which he'd grown...she hadn't seen those until they lost their Daniel.  Her boy wasn't bitter in grief; he was in terrible pain and he lived with it.  He was stronger for bearing the loss, and he'd found a different happiness. 

Daniel was different, the lightness in him, the love, sparking Jack to life. 

The best of it was, all those qualities Jack had learned from loving and being loved by Daniel, he was paying forward.  Jack's love and strength, his kindness, all of that hard-won patience, and the quiet joy of him, Daniel trusted those in him.  Daniel was in love with him. 

There'd been so much pain for her boys, so much they'd lost, but out of it, they'd found their love again.

 

**FINIS**


End file.
